At the 2026 World Geothermal Congress in Calgary, Canada, Lynn Briese, a doctoral candidate at the Center for Energy Technology (ZET) at the University of Bayreuth, was awarded the Best Poster Award. At the closing ceremony, her paper “Heat Pumps for Geothermal Heat and Steam Supply,” which she co-authored with Jaromir Jeßberger, Dr.-Ing. Florian Heberle, and Prof. Dr.-Ing. Dieter Brüggemann, won the audience poster award. The Bavarian Geothermal Alliance extends its warmest congratulations to Lynn Briese and all her co-authors on this recognition.
Renewable energy sources currently account for only 20% of Germany’s heat supply. Large-scale and high-temperature heat pumps are key components in the transition toward a sustainable energy supply. Integrating heat pumps into geothermal energy systems enables a reliable and more efficient use of geothermal energy.
The University of Bayreuth is focusing on innovative concepts for providing heating or process heat at temperatures of up to 150 °C. The research involves medium-depth geothermal sources or enhanced cooling of deep geothermal resources. Previous studies conducted as part of the Bavarian Geothermal Alliance have included part-load optimization and oil management for a pilot plant at the University of Bayreuth with a thermal output of 35 kW, as well as a technical and economic potential analysis for medium-depth geothermal energy in northern Munich. These studies not only demonstrated the economic viability of such systems. The life cycle assessments conducted also show that medium-depth geothermal energy is a sustainable and climate-friendly form of heat supply.
Currently, the existing high-temperature heat pump at the University of Bayreuth is being retrofitted for process steam supply with funding from the Bavarian Geothermal Alliance. PhD candidate Lynn Briese is using the experimental data to validate her simulation models. With the help of these models, promising application scenarios, for example in the food or paper industries, will then be evaluated from both technical and economic perspectives.
This award-winning research directly builds on the Bayreuth research group’s recently published paper on the part-load behavior of high-temperature heat pumps. Link to the paper
