“The Future of Geothermal Energy” and Its Challenges
- Key words
- EGS potential, proof of concept, site independence, upscaling
- Conference
- World Geothermal Congress
- Year
- 2010
- Session
- 31. EGS - Enhanced Geothermal Systems (Hot Dry Rock)
- Language
- English
- Paper number
- 3109
Full text
112KB, opens in a new tab
Abstract
The widely renowned M.I.T. study “The Future of Geothermal Energy” (2006) determined recoverable EGS resources > 200,000 EJ alone for the USA, corresponding to 2,000 times the annual primary energy demand. To universally and globally utilize these immense resources exciting R&D problems need to be tackled: 1) Development of a technology to produce electricity and/or heat from a basically ubiquitous resource, independent of site subsurface conditions (“EGS technology”); 2) Acquiring experience about possible changes of an EGS heat exchanger with time; 3) Upscaling EGS power plant capacity from the currently few MWe to several 10 – 100 MWe.
Copyright 2010, International Geothermal Association. Readers who download papers from this site should honour the copyright of the original authors, and may not copy or distribute the work further without the permission of the original publisher.