What Technical Performance Measures are Critical to Evaluate Geothermal Developments?

Abstract

When geologists, geophysicists and engineers study geothermal developments, each group has their own set of technical performance measures. While these performance measures tell each group something important about the geothermal development, there is often difficulty in translating these technical performance measures into financial performance measures for investors. In this paper, we argue that brine effectiveness is the best, simple financial performance measure for a geothermal investor. This is because it is a good, yet simple indicator of ROI (return on investment); and importantly, links well production to power plant production, hence describes the geothermal development in a holistic sense.