Provision of a deep geothermal solution

The Countess of Chester Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (The Contracting Authority) is seeking a suitably skilled supplier for a geothermal solution for heating the hospital, to displace fossil fuel heating.

The successful Bidder is expected to take the project through a series of technical and project gateways so that an opportunity can be determined as efficiently as possible and then made bankable into an energy services proposal.

The Contracting Authority's definition of a deep geothermal solution is defined as drilling beyond 500 metres below surface in order to harness higher temperatures.

For deeper geothermal systems, technologies such as Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) and Advanced Geothermal Systems (AGS) are utilised and are described as follows:

EGS: involves improving the permeability of the rocks to create an artificial reservoir in geothermal settings where the subsurface temperatures are high but permeability is low.

AGS: are deep, large circuits, with one or more wells drilled into hot rock with fluid circulating through a closed-loop system to bring heat to the surface.

Drilling less than 500 metres is considered a shallow geothermal resource more commonly known as a ground source heat pump solution and for the avoidance of doubt, the Contracting Authority is not seeking proposals for this type of solution.