About INTERSTORES project

INTERSTORES aims to provide the international market potential of sTES with high techno-economic and environmental performance. The EU aims to quickly decarbonize the energy sector through the Fit for 55 package, RePowerEU plan and Green Deal. Reused infrastructure Large-scale seasonal thermal energy storage (sTES) technologies (Reno-sTes and Giga-CTES) can assist the effort by enhancing the use of fluctuating heat sources. The INTERSTORES will tackle these challenges and accelerate decarbonization through the application of advanced sTES technologies. During the planned 48 months of the Project, we will advance technology used at two prominent demo sites in Finland and Germany with full-scale realisation and energy system integration. This will be feasible, as our industrial partners decided to cover most of the investment costs for implementing the sTES during the proposed project.Future energy systems will integrate diverse, variable renewable energy sources to replace fossil fuels, use sector coupling and waste heat recovery, and interact symbiotically with various users. Seasonal Thermal Energy Storage (sTES) are existential for peak-shaving and load-shifting in these systems and they increase the usability of decentrally generated thermal energy. INTERSTORES aims to achieve successful market acceptance, technological attractiveness and competitiveness by improving performance, cost efficiency and increased reliability. By pooling engineering, (hydro-)geological, environmental, and applied disciplines, as well as expertise from different sectors, 14 partners from 9 countries will ensure a high exploitability through technology transfer measures. For this, INTERSTORES promotes the full-scale realisation of two different sTES variants. Two demonstrators address one crucial concept of versatile sTES solutions in Europe’s future energy systems: The combination of several tuneable sTES.The overarching goal is to prove the international market potential of novel Reno-sTES and Giga-CTES by demonstrating highly favourable techno-economic and environmental performance. With the unique opportunity of full-scale demonstration, INTERSTORES’ innovations will close critical gaps for arriving at reliable facilities, robust operational functioning and replicable implementation. The two solutions will reveal crucial differences regarding optimal design, integration potential on different scales, operating conditions, costs, environmental impacts and benefits. Finally, INTERSTORES will not only demonstrate the application of planned innovation modules for sTES to the project’s demo sites but also set a major focus on maximising their replication potential. This will be achieved by complementing technological and digital developments at the demos with research on European transfer sites, regional markets and new business opportunities.