| Title | Modeling the Risk of Geothermal Energy Production Using GT-Mod |
|---|---|
| Authors | Lowry, Thomas S.; Kalinina, Elena; Hadgu, Teklu; McKenna, Sean A. |
| Year | 2011 |
| Conference | Geothermal Resources Council Transactions |
| Keywords | Geothermal; energy; uncertainty; risk assessment; modeling; simulation; economics |
| Abstract | Our ability to estimate the physical and economic performance of a potential geothermal energy project is directly proportional to our understanding of the sites geologic and hydrogeologic environments and our ability to predict its performance over time. Typically, when gaps in our understanding exist, assumptions are made to fill those gaps; an example of this would be using a constant thermal drawdown rate to predict a sites thermal performance over time. The drawback to this approach is that even if one were to perform the assessment using several different drawdown rates, consideration of the uncertainties in the ‘known’ inputs are usually ignored, as is the impact of using a constant drawdown rate versus a more physics-based approach. However, increasing understanding can be difficult (if not impossible) and expensive, which results in an environment where uncertainty is a constant working condition of the decision making process. This study uses an integrated systems modeling tool developed at Sandia National Laboratories called GT-Mod to test a quantitative risk assessment approach that accounts for the full range of uncertainties in the knowledge of a site to produce probabilistic outputs to support decision making. The analysis uses a hypothetical EGS site to examine the variation in the LCOE as a function of uncertainty. The variation in the LCOE is translated into a set of exceedance probabilities that describes the probability that the real LCOE will be below a certain value. An integrated risk is calculated as a function of net revenue generated over the life of the power plant. |