Hot Rock Ltd joins ambitious Australian computer modelling project
Data Portal Web front of NICTA (source: NICTA)
Alexander Richter
10 Apr 2013
Hot Rock Ltd. joins NICTA analytics project in Australia, that plans to identify underground energy sources without drilling through computer models, analysis and visualisation tools.
Geothermal development company Hot Rock Ltd. is the third firm that now joined a NICTA analytics project. The project plans to identify underground energy sources without drilling.
Conceived in 2011, the project was started in March last year (see announcement here) with around $5 million in funding, of which $1.9 million came from the Federal government of Australia.
The project has so far provided an Australia wide data portal, standardized data format and 3D visualisation software.
The second part of the project will start this year and the data that has been collected will be used to create models and test those with data from the Cooper Basin.
The data for the project comes from Geoscience Australia, the Resources Department of Southern Australia and Australian developers such as Petratherm and Geodynamics.
Hot Rock Ltd. has now joined the project and will contribute extensive large data sets on hot sedimentary aquifer targets in the Otway Basin.
“This program is an excellent opportunity for HRL to have high-quality researchers, working on state-of-the-art computer processing of large multi-variant databases, to assist us in better defining the best targets in our Otway Basin geothermal reservoirs,” executive chairman Mark Elliott said at the time.
“This is part of HRL’s new Otway Basin strategy of undertaking further work to reduce exploration risk, to identify the best drilling targets and to enhance the opportunity of attracting government and private funding for drilling programs to potentially lead to early discoveries.”
While no private company has provided funding to the project, the data provided by companies is valued at several millions.
The work on this project will help in providing crucial data to make geothermal exploration easier and less risky.
NICTA (National ICT Australia) is leading a multi-million dollar ICT-enabled geothermal energy initiative announced by the Australian Centre for Renewable Energy (ACRE). NICTA’s robust research capabilities in machine learning and in the increasingly significant area of big data analytics will be used to locate geothermal energy sources deep beneath the surface of the Earth.
Sources: NICTA,
