EDC’s Mahanagdong geothermal facility in Leyte, Philippines where GreenFire Energy and EDC are restoring an idle well. Courtesy of EDC.
Geothermal companies face multiple challenges including price pressure from other renewables, long project cycles, high capital costs, and high risk. Operators must also deal with unproductive wells from insufficient flow or pressure, intermittent production, or non-condensable gases. Additionally, wells with declining pressure and insufficient water can have reduced production from entire geothermal fields.
Operators want to expand production by starting new green field projects but new projects are costly and risky due to significant front-end capital expenditures, permitting and drilling risk, a long time to revenue, and only moderate returns. Projects have taken on average 7 years before revenue could be earned.1
For several decades geothermal had a declining share of the world energy market. The best way to reverse that trend is to produce more energy from underutilized assets. According to a U.S. Geological Survey, conventional technology accesses on average only 10% of available heat due to the its dependence on substantial permeability and water availability.2
Source: Evaluating the Volume Method in the Assessment of Identified Geothermal Resources, U.S. Geological Survey. 2014.
But there are opportunities for growth with a worldwide geothermal capacity of 15,8954 MW in 2021. Despite the challenges from the pandemic, capacity increased by 246 MW in 2021. The top 10 countries for geothermal installed power generation capacity are the U.S., Indonesia, Philippines, Turkey, New Zealand, Mexico, Italy, Kenya, Iceland, Japan. In the U.S. there is power generation capacity of 3722 MW.3
Geothermal companies require solutions that will produce more energy from underutilized assets. GreenFire’s GreenLoop technology can extract significantly more power from low permeability regions of existing projects. GreenFire Energy’s demonstration of field scale closed-loop geothermal technology at the Coso geothermal facility showed that the technology could generate 2,000 MWe instead of 130 MWe, which is over 10x more power.4
Geothermal companies also need technology solutions to help them develop new projects quickly and with less risk. GreenLoop includes proprietary modeling to assess geothermal wells, resources, and existing infrastructure to determine technoeconomic feasibility of projects and optimize the energy potential of geothermal resources. With these sophisticated analytics, resources are better assessed before expensive drilling costs are incurred, risk is reduced, and projects are completed faster.
In addition to advanced technology, geothermal companies need a new business model that reduces the long time to revenue, reduces the risk, and produces ROI on geothermal projects. GreenFire Energy provides strong economics where projects leverage existing geothermal resources and rights, infrastructure, power purchase agreements, and other investments. Leveraging existing assets reduces the time, risk, and increases the ROI of geothermal projects.
GreenFire Energy’s solutions driven by GreenLoop technology deliver power generation to geothermal companies to produce more energy from underutilized assets, develop new projects quickly and with less risk, and deliver strong economics. Learn more at GreenFire’s GreenLoop Technology and Power Generation Solutions.
Source: Top 10 Geothermal Countries 2021 for Installed Power Generation Capacity (MWe), ThinkGeoEnergy, January 10, 2022.
Geothermal Operators
Existing Resource and Rights
- Geothermal leases & permits
- Wells and reservoirs understood
Infrastructure and Legal
- Power purchase agreements
- Site infrastructure
- Interconnect & transmission
+
- GreenLoop Modeling
- GreenLoop Designs
- GreenLoop Capabilities
- Global project partners
- Geothermal project expertise
=
Unrivaled Results
- Fast time-to-revenue
- Low risk
- High ROI
- Competitive LCOE
1 2021 U.S. Geothermal Power Production and District Heating Market Report, NREL. 2021.
2 Williams, Colin F., Evaluating the Volume Method in the Assessment of Identified Geothermal Resources, U.S. Geological Survey. 2014.
3 Top 10 Geothermal Countries 2021 for Installed Power Generation Capacity (MWe), ThinkGeoEnergy. January 10, 2022.
4 California Energy Commission Consultant Report: Closed-Loop Geothermal Demonstration Project, GreenFire Energy Inc. June 2020.