Geothermal Exploration Case Studies for Hydrothermal Resource Analysis

Comprising geothermal exploration case studies developed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) for the Department of Energy's Geothermal Technologies Office. It includes technical narratives, exploration activity catalogs, and data on power production, geology, and geochemistry from areas like Raft River and Coso. The work aims to build a large enough dataset to analyze successful exploration plans.

Use Cases

• Analyze correlations between exploration activity catalog entries and successful resource identification for similar geologic occurrence models.
• Compare power production information and reservoir information across different geothermal areas to benchmark performance.
• Use geologic narratives and geochemistry information to train models for predicting undiscovered hydrothermal resources.
• Query NEPA analysis records cataloged for each area to assess environmental permitting timelines for exploration projects.

Strengths

• Case studies include direct citations of data, enhancing traceability.
• Template developed and tested with two initial case studies before expanding to ten more.
• Data collection covers multiple technical domains including geology, reservoir, and geochemistry.

Limitations

• The dataset size and number of rows are unspecified, limiting assessment of statistical power.
• Data is presented in HTML format, which may require parsing for structured analysis.
• Geographic coverage is focused on the western United States, limiting global applicability.

Provenance

Source

National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and the Department of Energy (DOE).

Collection Method

Case studies were developed and populated on the Geothermal Gateway on OpenEI using a standardized template.

Time Range

Case study development occurred primarily during fiscal years 2013-2015.

Freshness

Last updated metadata indicates 2026-03-21, but the underlying case studies were populated primarily in fiscal years 2013-2015.

Geography

Western United States, specifically including the Raft River and Coso Geothermal Areas.