In the week of 14 July 2025, RED (Renewable Energy Drilling) will drill two boreholes at the Vosbergen Museum to a depth of 490 metres in order to install deep closed ground loop systems. These ground loops will contribute to making the museum’s energy needs more sustainable and at the same time provide an opportunity to research this type of deeper, closed ground energy system. The drilling activities and heat pump supply were awarded to TEON on behalf of the Kraus Groeneveld Foundation and were made possible in part by the DUMAVA subsidy.
Once the closed ground loop systems have been made operational for the museum, an intensive monitoring programme will be launched at the site as part of work package 3 of the TKI Geo4all project.
The TKI research objective is to gain a good understanding of the subsurface, how it changes with depth and time due to, for example, groundwater flow, but above all how it reacts to the presence of a ground loop. This provides insights into how such a closed energy system can be optimised for the specific location.
During the drilling itself, soil samples will be taken by the drillers, which will then be analysed (as part of the Geo4all project) for their properties and linked to log data obtained immediately after the drilling has been completed. This combination of data provides a detailed overview of the properties (and their variation) of the subsurface, such as clay-sand percentage and permeability.
In addition to the information obtained during drilling, fibre optic cables will be installed on the outside of the ground loops to enable temperature measurements to be taken. This will enable monitoring by the Geo4all project. As a result, the temperature of both the descending (cold) loop and the ascending (warm) loop can be measured while the system is being used to heat the museum. By accurately determining the thermal properties of the different layers in the subsurface, seasonal fluctuations and groundwater flows can be detected. Placing two ground loops relatively close to each other makes it possible to test interference from one system and thus provides insights into the depletion and/or regeneration of the source.
Both ground loop systems will be monitored for a period of ~1.5 years as part of the TKI Geo4all project via a DTS (Distributed Temperature Sensing) unit that continuously measures the temperature along the entire depth of the loop. The data and knowledge from this location will be used, among other things, to further develop a performance model that can be used to estimate the potential capacity of a deep ground loop at any location in the Netherlands.
