Hot research at Sandia may make producing electricity from geothermal energy more cost competitive Joseph Henfling tests electronics in a high-temperature oven in the Geothermal Research Department at Sandia National Laboratories. Research under way in the department may improve the economic feasibility of using geothermal energy to produce electricity. Right now less than three percent of electricity in the U.S. comes from geothermal energy because it costs twice as much to produce as electricity created from natural gas. That is more than 100 degrees hotter than systems presently available to the geothermal industry. The Sandia project is funded by the Department of Energy Office of Geothermal Technologies.
Geothermal wells are expensive, partly due to the rock formations and high drilling temperatures.
In addition to well cost is drilling uncertainty. Even within known producing reservoirs, the driller often fails to hit a fluid-producing fracture. With new high-temperature electronics, drillers can deploy guidance tools behind the drill bit to steer the drilling process, reducing drilling time and risk. Temperatures in the geothermal wells can be as high as 350 degrees C, much too hot for standard electronics to function properly without the protection of Dewars. However, the Dewar only buys time within the well before equalizing in temperature, about 10 hours.