| Title | Wellhead Unit Technology in the Development of Geothermal Energy in the Caribbean |
|---|---|
| Authors | Charlin Bodley, Johnathan Kelly |
| Year | 2023 |
| Conference | World Geothermal Congress |
| Keywords | 1563 |
| Abstract | The benefits of geothermal energy in the transition of the power sector in the Caribbean region, are undisputed. The region’s commitment to reducing its high dependence on imported fossil fuels is critical to achieving affordability, reliability, sustainability, and resilience in the energy sector. Burdened by high electricity tariffs, the electricity sector is obligated to transition to indigenous renewable energy resources for a sustainable transition to be secured. High penetrations of intermittent renewable energy pose operational challenges for existing grid infrastructure to ensure a reliable and affordable supply of power. Geothermal energy for electricity generation is touted as a critical piece of the transition puzzle as it provides baseload power, is marked by a relatively low land footprint, offers higher resilience against climate and other vulnerabilities, and provides additional benefits through direct utilization. Globally, the proven benefit of the technology continues to encourage the relentless development of the Caribbean geothermal industry despite inherent challenges, including long gestation periods and high upfront costs. However, in the Caribbean region, the issue of diseconomies of scale and competing uses of land has plagued the region’s development of geothermal electricity projects. The Caribbean has a long history of pursuing the development of the resource through the conventional power plant approach towards developing centralized plants and associated steam field gathering, transmission and fluid reinjection systems. This approach has resulted in high cash outlays for de-risking the projects, and to date no power plant except in the overseas territory of Guadeloupe has been constructed. The geothermal projects in the Caribbean, despite having received extensive funding support for de-risking, continue to experience long lead times. This study confirms that wellhead technology offers a power conversion process applicable to the Caribbean islands. Despite the potential technical, operational, and environmental downside of the well-head units as longer-term solutions, they offer unique benefits to the Caribbean islands, through lower financial risks and a quicker return on investment. Wellhead unit technologies for the Caribbean context will help to ameliorate the issue of diseconomies of scale and challenges to attract reputable developers and industry experts, consequent of the intrinsic and relatively low energy demand profiles and high intra-hourly demand variability in island states. For small scale centralized geothermal power plants, the upfront design, fabrication, and mobilization costs are economically unattractive. Wellhead units would result in significant cost savings because of a reduced designed complexity and therefore offer faster returns on investment. With Kenya pioneering the wellhead technique to prevent drilled wells from remaining idle for years the Caribbean stands to learn from the associated best practices. Being disadvantaged by limited human capacity, adopting wellhead technology will benefit the Caribbean islands with an opportunity to steepen the learning curve for geothermal project development, learn about the resource and build capacity in geothermal development |