39 MARCH 2023 WorldWide Drilling Resource® Geothermal Reservoirs Studied for Potential Storage and Dispatch of Electricity Adapted from Information by Princeton University Recent advances in drilling technology have created new opportunities to widely deploy geothermal power. This spurred researchers at Princeton University to demonstrate geothermal technology’s further potential for energy storage. The key innovation harnesses knowledge from the gas and oil sector, including directional drilling and hydraulic stimulation, to create artificial fracture systems wherever hot, impermeable rock can be found. “That ability to move away from these very specific locations where you have all the right things in the right place, to just anywhere where you have hot enough rocks accessible without drilling too deep, means that enhanced geothermal can open up a much broader resource base,” said Jesse Jenkins, lead researcher and assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment. It turns out, this technique has another hidden advantage which has been overlooked until now. Water circulated through the artificial fracture system is contained within impermeable rocks, meaning it can’t leak out; and that makes these geothermal reservoirs a great a way to store large amounts of energy when demand is low and release energy when demand is high. Storing energy and shifting production to the most valuable times increases geothermal profitability and acts as a perfect complement for weather-dependent variable renewable systems such as wind and solar. “We ran reservoir simulations to evaluate the systems that we are designing,” said Jack Norbeck, cofounder and chief technology officer of Fervo Energy, a Houston-based development company pioneering advanced geothermal technologies. Simulations revealed geothermal systems could work to provide steady or baseload power, and efficiently store and shift power for later use. “We can operate them both in baseload and flexible modes, which is a major step forward for geothermal technology.” In 2020, engineers at Fervo were confident their system would work. However, they wanted to know about the system’s economics and how to optimally integrate the technology into the power grid. For answers, Fervo approached Jenkins, head of Princeton’s Zero-carbon Energy Systems Research and Optimization (ZERO) Lab. “That’s exactly the kind of questions that we love to look at,” said Jenkins. “These are practical questions that will guide real-world de cision-making and investment and innovation, but have not been answered in the academic literature yet. So that’s the perfect project for us - something that is an open question in the research where the answer matters today, immediately, for the decisions that real people are making about how to allocate their time and money and innovation efforts.” Norbeck provided technical support for the study. He said the core of the idea was to combine the thermal energy of subterranean rocks with mechanical energy of overlaying rock layers. Fervo’s engineers use horizontal drilling techniques to create a series of injection and production boreholes connected to each other by many small channels in the rock, forming an in-ground reservoir about 10,000 feet beneath the earth where water can be heated. Instead of immediately using heated water to drive turbines for electricity, technicians direct the hot, pressurized water into the reservoir’s network of channels. Fluid accumulates in the reservoir and flexes the rock, and that pressure can later be released to drive hot fluid to the surface to power turbines for electricity. Researchers showed this system can be used to store and dispatch electricity over a wide range of An injection well at the Blue Mountain geothermal plant. Photo courtesy of Dennis Schroeder/NREL. GEO For more information call: (270) 786-3010 or visit us online: www.geothermalsupply.com All New! Atlantis-Pro Vault • Traffic-Rated Capable • Simple installation • Trouble-free operation eranhenderson@gmail.com New & Used Tricones PDCs Drag & Claw Bits Drill Collars Bit Tipping Subs & Stabilizers HDD Bits & Reamers DTH Hammer & Bits Custom Fabrication Junk Mills / Fishing Tools Rod Henderson 661-201-6259 Eran Henderson 661-330-0790 Princeton Cont’d on page 40.
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