One of the more interesting talks and technologies at the GRC Annual Meeting was given by MIT Researcher Chad Augustine on Spallation Drilling using a hydrogen-oxygen (H²-O²) fuel source. Spallation is essentially catastrophic structural failure of rock when extreme heat is applied in a small area. As the rock heats, small pieces spring free of the face of the rock in micro explosions.

Spallation drilling consists of a torch placed in close physical proximity to the rock face, the application of extreme heat to a small surface area, and removal of the waste material produced by spallation. The trick to this is, how does one get a flame to burn in the presence of water (used to remove the waste material) in an extremely high pressure (250 bar) environment? Chad and team reproduced this environment in a test facility at Potter Drilling in Redwood City and discovered that not only was it possible to keep the flame active in the high pressure aqueous environment, but that temperatures necessary for spallation to occur (500C) were maintained.

This could be an important and cheaper alternative to rotary drilling. And, there are a bunch of holes to be drilled…

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The Geothermal Resources Council (GRC) held its annual meeting this year in Sparks, Nevada at John Ascuaga’s Nugget hotel and convention center October 1-3. The event was heavily attended by developers, service providers, geologists, and financiers and featured several heavyweight speakers including Alexander “Andy” Karsner from the Department of Energy, Michael Olsen from the Department of the Interior, and Nevada Governor Jim Gibbons. The basic structure of the event included special pre-meeting sessions and field trips, a morning of keynote addresses, and then parallel sessions for presenting and sharing geothermal industry breakthroughs over the following days. There was also a tradeshow sponsored by the Geothermal Energy Association that ran during the entire conference. All of this activity was supplemented by dinners, receptions, and many private meetings among the attendees. While the final attendee count was not announced, we estimate there were at least 1,000 people attending the event.

There were 99 breakout sessions available over 21 timeslots (unfortunately, the individual breakout sessions only ran one time, so there were mulitple interesting topics that were competing…) and there was one 2 hour “poster session” where 38 topics were represented (with significant overlap between poster hosts and breakout sessions.) The tradeshow featured at least 50 different exhibitors from service providers (drilling, operations & maintenance, law, finance) to geothermal developers to government and non-profit associations. Over the course of the next few days, you’ll see content from the conference that caught our attention in some detail.

Suffice to say, it was a busy and productive 3 days. The takeaway MeV has from the event is a structured approach to the assessment of the resources on our Sou Hills, Nevada prospect. To whet your appetite for future entries, here are some facts gleaned about geothermal resources in Nevada from the keynote speakers:

• The Nugget (hotel, casino, and convention center) electricity bill is $4M per year
• Nevada’s peak demand is around 8,000MW
• 300MW of geothermal power is being developed in Nevada, to add to the 200+MW already in production
• 556,000 acres of geothermal leases, or 80% of all geothermal leases, are in Nevada
• Geothermal resource estimates for Nevada range from 1,500 to 5,000MW

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