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Partner of the Month – Spike Renewables

Fri, 18 December, 2020

The GeoHex consortium includes partners with complimentary expertise, including small and medium enterprises (SMEs) keen to take the innovations to the market. “SMEs like Spike can contribute to the geothermal industry thanks to their specific expertise and know-how in peculiar topics” says Paolo Taddei of Spike Renewables as he discusses the project and its impacts on the geothermal industry.

Spike Renewables – Who Are We?

Spike Renewables is an engineering company based in Florence, Italy, focused on system engineering that deals with all aspects of a project, from design to construction and integration. Spike overlaps and manages technical and human-centered disciplines such as design, industrial engineering, control engineering, and energy model development for energy efficiency and renewable energy.

Our role in GeoHex

Spike designed and developed three test rigs with all the necessary instrumentation to facilitate heat transfer performance evaluation, while minimising heat loss with respectively single phase, condensing and boiling heat flow. For multi phase heat exchangers, Spike designed an optimal layout with two sided optical windows to be able to capture video footage of the condensing and boiling processes. The test rigs have been equipped with all the instrumentation and sensors necessary for both control systems and data acquisition for performance evaluation.

How do we think SMEs like Spike contribute to the geothermal industry through projects like GeoHex?

An SME like Spike can contribute to the geothermal industry thanks to their specific expertise and know-how in peculiar topics. With this vision, small companies can improve the quality of industrial research projects, for example developing and testing innovative solutions at a smaller scale, before increasing the capacities.