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Can Deep Stratigraphic Reservoirs Sustain 100 MW Power Plants? Rick Allis1 and Joe Moore2 1Utah Geological Survey, Salt Lake Survey, UT 2Energy & Geoscience Institute, University of Utah, UT rickallis@utah.gov • jmoore@egi.utah.edu GRC Transactions, Vol. 38, 2014 Keywords Stratigraphic reservoirs, thermal regime, permeability, flow rates, heat flow, sedimentary basins AbSTRACT Petroleum exploration wells confirm that the high perme- ability and high flow rates needed from geothermal production supporting large-scale power development can be found in deep stratigraphic reservoirs (> 3 km depth). Data from drilling in the Rocky Mountains and Great Basin of western U.S. show carbonate reservoirs at depths of 3 – 5 km have slightly better average permeability than siliciclastic reservoirs (75 versus 30 mDarcies). These values are sufficient for high-flow-rate geo- thermal production wells. Deep wells in two Rocky Mountain basins also show that carbonate reservoirs, possibly dolomitic, can preserve high permeability when the temperatures are 220 - 240°C at more than 5 km depth. There may be a relationship between widespread, good stratigraphic permeability, and res- ervoirs being at hydrostatic pressure. If true, this may imply that over-pressure is a negative indicator for a large geother- mal reservoir. Conventional oil well production flow rates are usually significantly lower than that required for geothermal power production, but this is due to oil viscosity being at least ten times higher than hot water, rather than low permeability reservoirs. The target conditions for stratigraphic geothermal reservoirs are temperatures of 175 - 200°C and depths of 3 – 4 km. These conditions can be found within basins where the heat flow is about 90 mW/m2, the average heat flow for the Great Basin. The eastern Great Basin is underlain by a lower Paleozoic carbonate section that ranges up to 3 km in thickness and is known to have good permeability. Numerous reservoir targets where temperatures are 175 - 200°C at depths of 3 – 4 km, and good stratigraphic permeability is known or inferred have been identified in the Great Basin. The large areas of these reservoirs (~ 102 to 103 km2) can each support power plants of more than 100 MWe. Introduction The onshore area of high heat flow in the U.S. (> 80 mW/m2) is large by global comparisons, with individual high-heat-flow areas exceeding ~104 km2 present in the Great Basin, Snake River Plain, Oregon Cascades, and Southern Rocky Mountains-Rio Grande Rift (Tester et al., 2006). Most growth in installed geothermal capacity in the U.S. over the last decade has been from binary plants with installed capacities averaging 25 MWe (GEA, 2014). Between 2013 and 2015 the Energy Information Agency (EIA) expects the growth in power generation from solar to be 50% per year, that of wind to be 6%/year, and geothermal to be 2%/year, with total wind generation being ten times that of solar or geo- thermal power in 2015 (EIA, 2014; the installed capacity of wind will be 76 GWe). In future decades, the development of enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) is expected to contribute ~10 GWe of power capacity (Ziagos et al., 2013; Jeanloz and Stone, 2014), but until that technology becomes economically viable, where will future growth in geothermal power production in the U.S. come from? Will we see geothermal power plants that are ~100 MWe in scale, similar in size to the wind and solar projects presently being constructed? Most of the accessible, economically attractive, hydrothermal systems have been tapped, and blind hydrothermal systems are both challenging to find and tend to have relatively small reservoirs (Blackwell et al., 2012). Allis et al. (2012, 2013) have suggested that sedimentary geothermal reservoirs may be a bridge between conventional hydrothermal systems that dominate the present 3.5 GWe of installed capacity in the U.S., and future EGS developments. These stratigraphic reservoirs are sub-horizontal and in high-heat- flow basins; the conductive thermal regime means temperatures approach 200°C at 3 – 4 km depth (Figure 1). In contrast to hy- drothermal systems, which in the Great Basin have areas 1 – 10 km2, stratigraphic reservoirs can have areas comparable to the area of the basin (103 to 104 km2), which is the primary reason for their attractive potential. Also, in contrast to EGS, which require the reservoir to be created by fracturing low permeability host rocks, stratigraphic reservoirs have the necessary permeability. 1009PDF Image | Can Deep Stratigraphic Reservoirs Sustain 100 MW Power Plants
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