Economic Analysis of Heat Mining

Abstract

The extraction of heat or thermal energy from the Earth heat mining -- has the potential to play a major role as an energy supply technology for the 21st century. This paper looks specifically at the potential for hot dry rock (HDR) geothermal energy in the United States. A generalized multi-parameter economic model was developed for optimizing the design and performance of HDR geothermal systems. Assuming reservoir productivity comparable to existing hydrothermal systems, high grade HDR systems produce electricity in the range. For low grade systems to become commercially attractive, much higher reservoir productivity levels and/or substantially lower drilling costs are required.