Geothermal Exploration Case Studies on OpenEI (Presentation): NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory)

Katherine Young

Research output: NRELPresentation

Abstract

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) resource assessment (Williams et al., 2008) outlined a mean 30 GWe of undiscovered hydrothermal resource in the western United States. One goal of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Geothermal Technology Office (GTO) is to accelerate the development of this undiscovered resource. DOE has focused efforts on helping industry identify hidden geothermal resourcesto increase geothermal capacity in the near term. Increased exploration activity will produce more prospects, more discoveries, and more readily developable resources. Detailed exploration case studies akin to those found in oil and gas (e.g. Beaumont and Foster, 1990-1992) will give developers central location for information gives models for identifying new geothermal areas, and guideefficient exploration and development of these areas. To support this effort, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has been working with GTO to develop a template for geothermal case studies on the Geothermal Gateway on OpenEI. In 2012, the template was developed and tested with two case studies: Raft River Geothermal Area (http://en.openei.org/wiki/Raft_River_Geothermal_Area) andCoso Geothermal Area (http://en.openei.org/wiki/Coso_Geothermal_Area). In 2013, ten additional case studies were completed, and Semantic MediaWiki features were developed to allow for more data and the direct citations of these data. These case studies are now in the process of external peer review. In 2014, NREL is working with universities and industry partners to populate additional casestudies on OpenEI. The goal is to provide a large enough data set to start conducting analyses of exploration programs to identify correlations between successful exploration plans for areas with similar geologic occurrence models.
Original languageAmerican English
Number of pages15
StatePublished - 2014

Publication series

NamePresented at the Stanford University Geothermal Workshop, 24-26 February 2014, Palo Alto, California

NREL Publication Number

  • NREL/PR-6A20-61437

Keywords

  • case studies
  • database
  • exploration
  • geothermal
  • occurrence model
  • OpenEI
  • play type

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