Design, commissioning and operating in-mineshaft heating experimental system (STEAM)

Descriptions

STEAM (short for GigaWatt-Hour Subsurface Thermal Energy storAge: Engineered structures and legacy Mine shafts) is a 2-year 1.2M GBP research programme funded by EPSRC and led by the University of Strathclyde. The STEAM project examines the potential to use abandoned mine shafts for interseasonal storage of curtailed wind energy in the form of thermal energy. In 2020, wind curtailment payments in the UK were 282M GBP: enough to power 1.25 million homes and equivalent to 4 GBP per MWh of energy generated. There is 120GW of 'spare' electricity in East Ayrshire alone. Thermal stores used previously are limited in size and by their need for insulation. Flooded mine shafts containing millions of cubic meters of water are ubiquitous across much of the UK, yet the thermal storage opportunity within shafts is unexplored. The rock mass around the shafts is a medium-quality insulator but pilot work by STEAM partners at the University of Edinburgh has shown that as the rocks heat up, the insulation efficiency rises considerably in as little as three years. We will investigate the feasibility of using the spare electricity on windy days to heat up water in abandoned mine shafts, to be extracted on cold days into homes and businesses. The UK is peppered with mine shafts from the days of coal mining - we want to turn these holes in the ground into thermal stores to help balance the electrical grid and to decarbonise homes and businesses. The University seeks the expertise of a suitably qualified and experienced supplier to submit a solution for the design and operation of the STEAM experiment. The experimental programme will be co-developed with the contractor and the STEAM delivery team in response to the baseline datasets as they become available (in the first 9-12 months of the contract), and limitations of monitoring. The delivery team are expecting approximately 4-5 experimental phases, each lasting 10-14 days, to take place in Q4 2023 - Q1 2024. The University is looking to secure the services of a single supplier, who will manage sub-contractors where needed, to deliver the listed objectives and requirements related to the safe establishment and operation of an in-shaft heating system and monitoring programme.