Advanced geothermal available online in Germany

This article was originally published by canary media,

Ivor, an advanced-geothermal startup, says it has significantly reduced drilling time and improved technologies at its nearly online project in Germany – milestones that will help it reduce the cost of exploitation. Clean energy from the ground.

,“Just as wind and solar have come down the cost curve, unconventional shale (oil and gas) have come down the cost curve, we now have a technical proof-point that we have done that in Europe,” jeanine vanysaid co-founder and executive vice president of corporate affairs at Ivor geothermal rising Conference in Reno, Nevada.

Ivor is part of a rapidly growing effort to expand geothermal energy projects beyond traditional hot spots like California salton sea area Or the lava fields of Iceland. Company and other companies including Fervo Energy, Sage GeosystemsAnd xgs energy– Adopting equipment and technologies from the oil and gas industry to be able to withstand the harsh conditions found deep underground.

The industry wants to produce abundant clean electricity and heat anywhere in the world, and it could serve as an ideal, around-the-clock pairing for solar and wind power. But geothermal companies are just beginning to test their new technologies.

Ivor’s geothermal breakthrough in Germany

Eivor begins drilling at Geretsryde in July 2023A immediately after winning ,107 grant of crores From the EU Innovation Fund. for before this ,Loop,” the company drilled two vertical wells until reaching approx. 2,8 Miles below the surface, a dozen horizontal wells were then drilled – like the teeth of a fork – that each spanned 1,8 Miles long. Once set in place, the wells are connected underground and sealed so that they act like radiators: as water circulates within the system, it collects heat from the rocks and brings it to the surface.

Operations on the first of the four loops are nearly complete, and the startup plans to begin construction on its second loop in March 2026All told, the system will supply 8,2 MW power to the regional grid and 64 MW District heating in nearby cities, working flexibly to provide more heat during the cold winter months and produce more electricity in the summer.

In its new paper, Eivor said it faced significant challenges in drilling the first eight of the twelve lateral wells it took over. 100 Days to completion—a major expense in an industry where a drilling rig can cost approximately $100,000 A day to run. But the company said it has improved its technologies and adapted its equipment in a way that has reduced drilling time for the remaining four wells. 50 percent,

For example, Ivor said it has successfully deployed an insulated drill pipe technology that can actively cool drilling tools even when faced with increasingly hot conditions underground and help increase drilling speeds. The adjustments also enabled Ivor to triple the run time before its drill bits wear out, reducing downtime during operations.

In addition to cutting drilling time and costs, these improvements should also pave the way to increasing Eivor’s thermal-energy production per loop by approximately 35 percentVeni said.

The Germany project will be the first commercial system of its kind when it starts producing power later this year. But other next-generation approaches – such as Fervo’s advanced geothermal systems construction in utah And working in nevada– are also increasing.

Challenges in geothermal drilling

Advanced geothermal involves breaking rocks and pumping fluids to create artificial reservoirs. Hot rocks directly heat fluids, which return to the surface to form steam. This approach is relatively more efficient at extracting heat from the ground, but it could also increase the risk of inducing earthquakes or affecting groundwater – although experts say this is unlikely to happen in well-managed projects. In places like Germany where fracking is banned, closed-loop systems can still go ahead.

But the closed-loop design has its own trade-offs, it said. Jeff Tester, Professor of Sustainable Energy Systems at Cornell University and lead scientist of Cornell’s Earth Source Heat Project. That is, pipes can limit the transfer of heat from underground rocks to the fluid inside the pipe, which in turn limits how much energy a system can produce.

,While companies developing closed-loop systems can make them work, the main challenge they face is making the fluid temperature and flow rate high enough to pay off economically,” Tester said. ,You can get energy from the ground; “It’s just, how much sustainably and economically can you produce from a closed-loop well connection?”

Vaini said Ivor’s modeling shows its technology is already in line with ,Levelized cost of heat in Europe”, which estimates the average cost of providing a unit of heat over the lifetime of the project. This figure can fluctuate between $50 and $100 per megawatt-hour of thermal in the region’s volatile energy market, he said.

,“After we complete the first four loops, we will be at the bottom of the learning curve,” Weeni said. ,“And that is the purpose of the Geretsryde project.”