The 10 25 55 (And Counting) Most Common Mistakes in Geothermal Development

Abstract

Although geothermal development worldwide is a success story, there have also been sub-optimal results. A number of common themes have been observed. The most important over-arching reason for failure (other than simply poor quality resources) appear to be: (1) lack of communication between scientific disciplines and between the resource and engineering design teams, (2) failure to maintain flexibility, updating and changing working assumptions as the project progresses, (3) lack of recognition of the requirements of long term operation of a successful project such as operability and steam quality, and (4) lack of recognition that geothermal development is fundamentally an economic activity and the project must make financial sense both initially and into the future.