This spreadsheet identifies various flexibility characteristics for flash and binary geothermal power plants which could potentially facilitate provision of grid services beyond bulk power generation. Characteristics are differentiated between resource characteristics such as metal concentration and plant characteristics such as flow rates of pumps used in flash vs. binary plants.
This report examines life cycle water consumption for various geothermal technologies to better understand factors that affect water consumption across the life cycle (e.g., power plant cooling, belowground fluid losses) and to assess the potential water challenges that future geothermal power generation projects may face. Previous reports in this series quantified the life cycle freshwater requirements of geothermal power-generating systems, explored operational and environmental concerns related to the geochemical composition of geothermal fluids, and assessed future water demand by geothermal power plants according to growth projections for the industry. This report seeks to extend those analyses by including EGS flash, both as part of the life cycle analysis and water resource assessment. A regional water resource assessment based upon the life cycle results is also presented. Finally, the legal framework of water with respect to geothermal resources in the states with active geothermal development is also analyzed.
Pushing the boundaries with geothermal tool development can often necessitate exceeding manufacturer specifications for temperature and pressure of individual circuit components. Detailed here are the efforts surrounding geothermal temperature characterization of commercially available HT-Flash memory modules made by Texas Instruments (SM28VLT32-HT) and preliminary results of 3 commercial solid tantalum capacitors. Flash evaluation boards were modified for high temperature application and read, write and erase functionality were tracked as well as prolonged data retention at various temperatures well beyond datasheet specifications.