Converting Texas oil well to geothermal plants, Stanford

[Arthur Hanson]

Converting Abandoned Oil Wells to Geothermal Plants in Texas

This could be a possible solution to the power consumption of AI data centers and other power problems.

 

[milesgehm]

Undergrad course term paper. Unlikely.

 

[Arthur Hanson]

Undergrad course term paper. Unlikely.

Please state the technical reasons why not. Geothermal plants are operating around the world and fracked wells are drilled deep and have the surface area needed to create plentiful steam.

 

[Arthur Hanson]

Undergrad course term paper. Unlikely.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/er.6386

Do your homework before commenting

 

[milesgehm]

The paper in the original post was an undergrad term paper. There are efforts underway to explore the idea, but they seem to be in early stages. Electricity generated from Geothermal has been pretty stagnant in the US. I don't see it suddenly ramping up in time to provide power to AI data centers by the end of the decade. Will it contribute by 2050? Surely.

https://www.energy.gov/eere/articles/doe-awards-84-million-accessing-geothermal-potential-inactive-or-unproductive-oil-and

https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy21osti/78291.pdf

 

[tooLongInEDA]

Please state the technical reasons why not. Geothermal plants are operating around the world and fracked wells are drilled deep and have the surface area needed to create plentiful steam.

The amount of power you can get from these wells is at least an order of magnitude too low to make a diifference. There simply aren't enough wells.

This *might* be an economically viable way of getting more use out of disused oil wells, but it's not going to move the needle on increasing power supply at a national level.

Aside from that, I didn't see any practical examples of this stuff working. Are the oilwell bores of the same dimension and quality as those needed for geothermal power systems (I don't know - but the paper is very, very short and said nothing here) ? Are these bores sufficiently well sealed and insulated that you won't suffer excessive water and heat losses ? How much does maintenance cost and how often is it needed ? A lot of questions not addressed.

Don't know a huge amount about geothermal power, but my recollection is that where it was developed (places like New Zealand and Iceland) it's relied on heat vents close to the earth's surface rather than 3 miles down.

Finally, what's the cost per kWh to the end user ? Is this competitive with other alternatives ?

I guess if I read your second referenced paper (the Wiley one - this looks much better) I might get some answers.

 

[Arthur Hanson]

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S030142152100570X

This is more comprehensive data on the potential and not student papers

 

[peter]

The amount of power you can get from these wells is at least an order of magnitude too low to make a diifference. There simply aren't enough wells.

This *might* be an economically viable way of getting more use out of disused oil wells, but it's not going to move the needle on increasing power supply at a national level.

Aside from that, I didn't see any practical examples of this stuff working. Are the oilwell bores of the same dimension and quality as those needed for geothermal power systems (I don't know - but the paper is very, very short and said nothing here) ? Are these bores sufficiently well sealed and insulated that you won't suffer excessive water and heat losses ? How much does maintenance cost and how often is it needed ? A lot of questions not addressed.

Don't know a huge amount about geothermal power, but my recollection is that where it was developed (places like New Zealand and Iceland) it's relied on heat vents close to the earth's surface rather than 3 miles down.

Finally, what's the cost per kWh to the end user ? Is this competitive with other alternatives ?

I guess if I read your second referenced paper (the Wiley one - this looks much better) I might get some answers.

All good points. There's the huge question mark of consistency of heat output over time from these oil wells too, nobody really wants to take the risk to try and find out. At the end of the day, lacks the "sexiness" of solar and wind turbines, costs more per kWh than other renewables and suffers from lots of red tape. Much better capacity factor than other renewables but that still doesn't seem to be enough to push the needle in the other direction.