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New geothermal drilling technology – will it be hot water, laser or …

New geothermal drilling technology – will it be hot water, laser or … Vanguard Geothermal Drill Bits, Baker Huges (source: Baker Hughes)
Alexander Richter 18 Dec 2012

The race is on and competition is heating up for Potter Drilling, Foro Energy and Geothermal Anywhere in developing new technology that is to speed up drilling and decrease overall drilling cost.

In geothermal technology development has been rather stagnant. Unlike for other renewable energy technologies, geothermal and the development of projects has not evolved much from – lets say – twenty years ago.

But today, geothermal projects are drilling deeper and EGS as a technology is more and more interesting for providing much needed clean electricity.

One of the main cost elements for geothermal development is drilling, the deeper one has to drill the more expensive projects get, as it is a large element of the overall cost structure in development. For EGS projects, that are targeting hot zones much deeper than conventional projects, drilling costs are a huge factor.

Drilling cost consists of costs for drilling bits, drilling crew, mobilisation of drilling rig, but also traditionally day rates for the rig rental or operation. Hence the quicker one can drill and this also deeper, overall drilling costs go down also effecting the bottom line cost of project development.

Therefore technological development has seen some investor interest and there are – to the best of my knowledge – three companies looking at providing new technologies that are supposed to revolutionize drilling.

A recent article in the New Scientists looks at Foro Energy and its laser drilling. Another company of interest is Potter Drilling. Both are from the United States and have been reported on here before (Potter Drilling, Foro Energy). But there is also Slovakian Geothermal Anywhere, a company ThinkGeoEnergy reported just last week.

Foro Energy – with partly funding through the ARPA-E program of the Department of Energy – is working on a drill that uses fiber optic laser, expected to outpower traditional drilling equipment. The laser – connected through a little fiber optic cable through the bore well, “heats up rock so fast that it immediately fractures due to thermal shock, making it easy for a conventional drill then to rip it out.”

The technology is expected to speed up drilling dramatically.

Potter Drilling on the other hand is taking another approach, using extremely hot water. As a reply to the recent press on Foro Energy, Jared Potter says that the laser technology still would have to prove itself, as a laser beam would have to be applied directly to the rock. Normal conditions in the bottom of a borehole traditionally contain rock chips and churning water that lubricates the drill bit. This could prove difficult for laster to hit rock directly.

In any way any development and technological advancement is good if it makes geothermal drilling both faster and cheaper. So we will continue to look at these companies and their developments.

Source: New Scientist, ARPA-E, Next Big Future