Activities of HDR Under Geothermal Implementing Agreement, IEA

Abstract

It is now about 20 years since the first HDR geothermal energy system was completed at Fenton Hill in the US in 1977. Since then a number of projects such as Rosemanowes in the UK, Soultz in France, Hijiori, Ogachi in Japan, etc. have been developed throughout the world. The original concept was that once we knew how to create a HDR reservoir it would be a relatively easy task to duplicate this wherever there was hot crystalline rock. The evidence from 20 years of research tells us that this idea was mistaken. The variations between the reservoirs are essentially a result of the different geological conditions at the sites and that must take into account in the development of HDR reservoirs. The mission of the HDR task of the Geothermal Implementing Agreement is to address the issues currently critical to the commercial development of HDR technology. It is important that the questions asked by potential developers be answered. It is believed that this cannot be done by any single experiment, but only by drawing together the experience of HDR projects around the world. To accomplish this overall mission the following subtasks were proposed: (1) Subtask A: Hot Dry Rock Economic Models (2) Subtask B: Application of Technology of Conventional Geothermal Energy to Hot Dry Rock Technology (3) Subtask C: Data Acquisition and Processing (4) Subtask D: Reservoir Evaluation