| Abstract |
In 2008, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated that there are approximately 30,000 MW of undiscovered hydrothermal resources in the western United States alone (USGS, 2009) and yet in 2010 only 15MW of geothermal electricity capacity were put online in the U.S. (Jennejohn, 2011). Exploration and confirmation risks and costs are a major cause for the slow development of this clean, baseload energy source. Currently, the surface and subsurface are characterized through combinations of ground-based and remote geophysical surveys, geochemical and geological surveys, modeling and drilling. More accurate and efficient exploration technologies are necessary to reduce the upfront risk and cost of discovering and defining these hidden resources. In order to identify critical technologies and technology gaps where research and development investment can lead to important advances, the U.S. Department of Energy Geothermal Technologies Program (the Program) is developing a geothermal exploration technologies roadmap. To this end, the Program held a planning workshop in October 2010. The workshop brought together a diverse group of experts from industry, academia and government to identify potential advances to pursue over the coming years, specifically with regard to technologies that have the greatest potential to contribute to the Program’s goal of identifying new geothermal prospects and lowering the cost of geothermal development. The product of that workshop was an Innovative Exploration Technologies Needs Assessment (U.S. Department of Energy, 2011) that identifies ten technology needs that are deemed to represent areas where technology advances would have the greatest potential impact on exploration success and increasing geothermal capacity. The technology advancement needs identified through this work provided the groundwork for further technology roadmapping. The Program, in collaboration with stakeholders, will use the identified high-impact research areas from the needs assessment to develop technology pathways with milestones and metrics to advance geothermal exploration technologies. This paper discusses the results of the needs assessment and plans to further develop a technical roadmap for exploration technologies. |