An estimate of the cost of electricity production from hot-dry rock

Conference · Fri Jan 01 00:00:00 EST 1993

OSTI ID:6591521

Pierce, K G ^[1]; Livesay, B J ^[2]

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1. Sandia National Labs., Albuquerque, NM (United States)
2. Livesay Consultants, Inc., Encinitas, CA (United States)

This paper gives an estimate of the cost to produce electricity from hot-dry rock (HDR). Employment of the energy in HDR for the production of electricity requires drilling multiple wells from the surface to the hot rock, connecting the wells through hydraulic fracturing, and then circulating water through the fracture system to extract heat from the rock. The basic HDR system modeled in this paper consists of an injection well, two production wells, the fracture system (or HDR reservoir), and a binary power plant. Water is pumped into the reservoir through the injection well where it is heated and then recovered through the production wells. Upon recovery, the hot water is pumped through a heat exchanger transferring heat to the binary, or working, fluid in the power plant. The power plant is a net 5.1-MW[sub e] binary plant employing dry cooling. Make-up water is supplied by a local well. In this paper, the cost of producing electricity with the basic system is estimated as the sum of the costs of the individual parts. The effects on cost of variations to certain assumptions, as well as the sensitivity of costs to different aspects of the basic system, are also investigated.

• Research Organization: Sandia National Labs., Albuquerque, NM (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE; USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
• DOE Contract Number: AC04-76DP00789
• OSTI ID: 6591521
• Report Number(s): SAND-93-0866C; CONF-930484-1; ON: DE93011670
• Resource Relation: Conference: Geothermal program review, Berkeley, CA (United States), 27-29 Apr 1993
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

15 GEOTHERMAL ENERGY
GEOTHERMAL POWER PLANTS
COST ESTIMATION
HOT-DRY-ROCK SYSTEMS
GEOTHERMAL ENERGY CONVERSION
COST
COST BENEFIT ANALYSIS
FRACTURED RESERVOIRS
GEOTHERMAL WELLS
INJECTION WELLS
RESERVOIR ROCK
CONVERSION
ECONOMIC ANALYSIS
ECONOMICS
ENERGY CONVERSION
GEOTHERMAL SYSTEMS
POWER PLANTS
THERMAL POWER PLANTS
WELLS
Geothermal Legacy
150500* - Geothermal Energy- Economics
Industrial
& Business Aspects