Geothermal Exploration Cost and Time Baseline Data

Aggregated cost and time data for geothermal exploration techniques, developed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) for the Department of Energy's Geothermal Technology Office. It was published in 2013 to establish a baseline for measuring the impact of RD&D funding on reducing geothermal exploration risks and costs. The data is used to populate an online impact measurement tool available on the Open Energy Information (OpenEI) website.

Use Cases

• Analyze cost and time data for specific geothermal exploration techniques to benchmark project planning.
• Measure the impact of RD&D funding by comparing future exploration projects against the established baseline suite of techniques.
• Utilize the aggregated cost data to model financial requirements for geothermal exploration activities.
• Use the time data to estimate project schedules and identify time-intensive exploration phases.

Strengths

• Data is provided by the authoritative US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) for the Department of Energy.
• The dataset serves as a formally defined baseline for measuring improvements in geothermal exploration.
• Publicly accessible under a Creative Commons (CC-BY) license via the Open Energy Information website.

Limitations

• The dataset's temporal coverage is centered on 2012-2013, making the cost and time estimates potentially outdated for current economic conditions.
• Specific data granularity, such as row count, column details, and sample size, is not provided in the input.
• The primary file format is HTML, which may not be structured for direct analytical use without extraction and parsing.

Provenance

Source

US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) for the Department of Energy's Geothermal Technology Office.

Collection Method

Data was collected for exploration techniques to create a baseline suite, with methodology described in an associated paper.

Time Range

Methodology and baseline developed in 2012, published in 2013.

Freshness

The underlying data and methodology were published in 2013, though the platform record shows a last updated date in 2026.