| Title | Deep drilling costs reduction |
|---|---|
| Authors | Dumas, P |
| Year | 2016 |
| Conference | European Geothermal Congress |
| Keywords | deep geothermal, drilling, costs, market |
| Abstract | Drilling represents from 30% to 50% of the cost of a hydrothermal geothermal electricity and heat projects and more than half of the total cost of Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS). This paper aims at presenting non-technical proposals to overcome this substantial financial barrier. Deep drilling costs can be reduced: - With RD&D activities - With Learning by doing series of drilling - With a better functioning drilling market Research and Development (R&D) can improve geothermal drilling technologies in order to reduce its costs. R&D should focus both on novel drilling concepts and on improvements to current drilling technology, as well as for other ways to optimize the economics of drilling operations (horizontal, multi-wells etc.). Nowadays, drilling for deep geothermal energy is done using equipment originally intended for the hydrocarbon industry. The target is to reduce cost for drilling and underground installations in 2020/2025 by at least 25 % compared to the situation today. By developing more deep geothermal projects in a region, and multi-wells project, the well fields will see a cost reduction of the drilling. Another challenge today is to improve market conditions for geothermal deep drilling. The deep geothermal drilling market could be more integrated with more access to available geothermal drilling cost data. Moreover, the interaction between project developers and drilling contractors could be improved. Following the previous work done during GEOELEC project, the paper will draw some new proposals to overcome this issue of Deep drilling costs and market. |