Evaluating the performance of short-term heat storage in alluvial aquifer with 4D electrical resistivity tomography and hydrological monitoring

In the context of energy demand side management (DSM), energy storage solutions are needed to stock energy during high production periods and recover energy during high demand periods. Among currently studied solutions, storing energy in the subsurface through heat pumps and/or exchangers (thermal energy storage) is relatively simple with low investment costs. However, the design and functioning of such systems have strong interconnections with the geology of the site which may be complex and heterogeneous, making predictions difficult. In this context, local temperature measurements are necessary but not sufficient to model heat flow and transport in the subsurface. Electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) provides spatially distributed information on the temperature distribution in the subsurface. In this study, we monitored, with 4D ERT combined with multiple hydrological measurements in available wells, a short-term heat storage experiment in a confined alluvial aquifer. We injected heated water (ΔT=30K) during 6 hours with a rate of 3 m³/h, stored during 3 days, and then we pumped it back to estimate the energy balance. We collected ERT data sets using 9 parallel profiles of 21 electrodes and cross-lines measurements. Inversion results clearly show the ability of ERT to delimit the thermal plume growth during injection, the diffusion and decrease of temperature during storage, and the decrease in size after pumping. Quantitative interpretation of ERT is difficult at this stage due to strong spatial variations of the total dissolved solid content in the aquifer, due to historical chloride contamination of the site. Energy balance shows that up to 75% of the energy can be easily recovered with an adapted strategy in the context of DSM. Short-term heat storage in alluvial aquifer is efficient and ERT is a valuable tool to image and estimate the temperature distribution in the subsurface.