Geothermal Energy Yverdon-les-Bains

The Swiss Seismological Service (SED) at ETH Zurich performs the baseline seismic monitoring of deep geothermal projects in canton Vaud for the canton's Direction Générale de l'Environnement (DGE) in the framework of the GEOEBST2020+ project, which is funded by the Federal Office of Energy (SFOE). As part of this project, four additional seismic stations were installed close to Yverdon-les-Bains to monitor the upcoming deep geothermal project Malménergie Naturelle (link). The goals are to ensure that even small earthquakes (ML>=1) in the vicinity of the project can be located accurately and quickly, to get a better knowledge of the local natural seismicity, and to help to clarify whether such events are of natural origin or possibly related to the geothermal project (once it has started).

With the Malménergie Naturelle project, the vegetable producer Stoll Production SA aims to use geothermal greenhouse heating to replace currently used fossil fuels. The planned geothermal system targets the Malm limestones, located at a depth of about 1.1 to 1.2 km and  will be composed of strongly deviated production and re-injection wells with open-hole sections sub-parallel to the regional Pipechat-Chamblon-Chevressy (PCC) fault system. In addition to the vegetable production, the hot geothermal water will be used for district heating and re-injected in the targeted geological reservoir.