Geothermal Power Technology
KENNETH H. WILLIAMSON, RICHARD P. GUNDERSON, GERALD M. HAMBLIN,
DARRELL L. GALLUP, AND KEVIN KITZ
Invited Paper
In 1999, 8 GWe of electrical generating plant worldwide was
powered by geothermal heat. Geothermal sources generated 49 ter-
awatt hours of virtually pollution-free power that year. Coal- or oil-
fired plants generating this amount would discharge 40 million
tons per year of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Geothermal
capacity has doubled in the past 20 years, and increased 17% in
the past five years. The United States and the Philippines account
for 50% of that installed capacity worldwide.
The thermal energy stored in the upper 10 km of the earth’s crust
is vast. For example, below the land surface of the U.S., it is es-
timated to be 105 times annual energy demand for the country,
but most of it is not economically accessible. The only thermal en-
ergy currently economic to extract is from sites where temperatures
above 200  C are easily accessible by conventional drilling, and
reservoirs of hot water or steam exist in the subsurface.
To unlock a significant fraction of this vast energy source major
technological advances are needed. These include improvements in
drilling technology to lower the cost of wells, in fracture stimula-
tion technology to create and control permeability in tight rocks,
and in geophysical and chemical tracer technology to characterize
thermal and hydraulic regimes in the subsurface. This will take
a coordinated effort by government and industry over one or two
decades.
Keywords—Geothermal power, heat mining, hot dry rock, hot
springs, hydrothermal systems, renewable energy, sustainable en-
ergy.
I. INTRODUCTION
The worldwide power output from geothermal sources in-
creased from 2.6 terawatt hours/year (TWh/yr) in 1960 to 49
TWh/yr in 1999 as the installed geothermal plant capacity
increased from 386 MW in 1960 to 7974 MW in 1999 [1].
Seventy-five percent of the worldwide capacity is produced
from the 20 sites with more than 100 MW installed gener-
ating capacity (Fig. 1).
Manuscript received March 26, 2001; revised July 10, 2001.
K. H. Williamson, R. P. Gunderson, G. M. Hamblin, and D. L. Gallup
are with the Geothermal Technology & Services, Unocal Corporation,
Santa Rosa, CA 95401 USA (e-mail: kwilliamson@unocal.com; Rgun-
derson@unocal.com; Jmhamblin@unocal.com; Dgallup@unocal.com).
K. Kitz is with the Philippine Geothermal Inc. (Unocal Corporation),
Makati City 1226, Philippines (e-mail: kevin.kitz@unocal.com).
Publisher Item Identifier S 0018-9219(01)10841-8.
0018–9219/01$10.00 © 2001 IEEE
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Geothermal power projects convert the energy contained
in hot rock into electricity by using water to absorb heat
from the rock and transport it to the earth’s surface, where
it is converted to electrical energy through turbine-genera-
tors. Water from high-temperature 240 C reservoirs is
partially flashed to steam and heat is converted to mechan-
ical energy by passing steam through low-pressure steam tur-
bines. A small fraction of geothermal generation worldwide
is generated using a heat exchanger and secondary working
fluid to drive the turbine.
Exploitable geothermal reservoirs exist in high-tem-
perature, highly permeable, fluid-filled rock within the
earth’s upper crust, typically in areas associated with young
volcanic rocks. Driven by heat loss from underlying magma,
hot fluids rise along pre-existing zones of high permeability.
The buoyant up-flowing fluids enhance the permeability
of the rocks through which they are flowing by chemical
leaching and by explosive boiling. If the system becomes
large enough and has high enough permeability, it has the
potential to be a commercial grade geothermal reservoir
with temperatures typically in the range 240 C–320 C
(Fig. 2). Current drilling technology can economically ex-
ploit geothermal reservoirs in the depth range 500–3000 m.
It is estimated that more than 97% of current geothermal
production is from magmatically driven reservoirs. More
than 90% of exploited fields were “liquid-dominated”
under pre-exploitation conditions with reservoir pressures
increasing with depth in response to a liquid-phase density.
“Vapor-dominated” systems, such as The Geysers in Cal-
ifornia, have vertical pressure gradients controlled by the
density of the steam.
Geothermal reservoirs may also develop outside regions
of recent volcanic activity, where deeply penetrating faults
allow groundwater to circulate to depths of several kilome-
ters and become heated by the geothermal gradient. Vertical
temperature gradients [3] typically range from 10 C/km to
80 C/km so, for example, in a gradient of 50 C/km ground-
water circulating to depths of 4–5 km may increase in tem-
perature above 200 C before flowing upwards under buoy-
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Fig. 1. Worldwide distribution of the approximately 85 geothermal fields developed for the
production of electricity. The 20 named fields with installed capacity of greater than 100 MW
represent about 6 GW, or 75% of the total worldwide installed geothermal generation capacity. Two
thirds of this comes from the U.S., the Philippines, and Mexico. All of the geothermal capacity in the
U.S. is in the tectonically and volcanically active western states.
ancy forces. This up-flowing hot water may accumulate in
a shallow aquifer, and create an economic geothermal re-
source.
Starting 20 years ago, experiments have been conducted
in hot dry rock (HDR) in the U.S., U.K., France, and Japan,
where heat is extracted from rocks that are not naturally
fractured and where permeability is low. If this technology
becomes commercial, the resource base of geothermal
energy will increase by several orders of magnitude world-
wide. The principal technology issues to be addressed for
HDR are drilling costs, control of water loss, and improved
fracture stimulation and mapping methods. The terms hot
wet rock (HWR) [4] and more recently enhanced geothermal
systems (EGS) [5] are also in use to describe research into
heat extraction from low permeability geothermal systems.
Two other types of geothermal resource were investigated
in the 1980s with U.S. Government funding: “Geopressured”
resources, where methane-rich fluids below 4.5 km depth are
contained in reservoirs with 70 MPa pressure and 150 C
temperature [6], and “Magma” resources, where heat was
extracted directly from cooling magma on active volcanoes
[7].
II. EXPLORATION
The rate of heat loss at the earth’s surface [2] is estimated
at 4 10 W, 30% of which is from continental areas. Heat
flows are typically in the range 20–120 mW/m , averaging
87 mW/m , but in regions of recent volcanic activity where
molten magmas have ascended from the earth’s mantle and
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reside in the crust beneath volcanic chains, heat flow can
be an order of magnitude higher. Hot springs and fumaroles
are common surface manifestations of this excess heat flow
from cooling magma and almost all the exploited geothermal
systems were drilled because of the occurrence of surface
thermal features. An analogy may be drawn with the early
oil industry, where surface oil seeps attracted wildcatters. It
is likely that many magmatically driven systems have no sur-
face expression, and remain to be discovered.
The fluids circulating in a geothermal system react chem-
ically with their host rocks, altering both the mineralogy of
the rock and the chemistry of the dissolved species in the
water. The altered state of both the water and rock are used
in the process of exploring for commercial geothermal sys-
tems. Chemical analysis of waters from hot springs and of
gases from fumaroles yields important information about the
temperature and other conditions under which they reacted
with geothermal system host rocks. This is a cost-effective
way to explore for the hottest and chemically most attractive
systems.
The electrical resistivity of rocks and fluids in and around a
convecting geothermal system is modified by a combination
of chemical and thermal effects [8]. An increase in cation-
exchange capacity creates a 5 m conductor above the
reservoir, against a typical background of 20 m, which
is easily detectable using a combination of magnetotelluric
and time-domain electromagnetic methods on the surface.
The size and shape of a geothermal reservoir can often be
deduced from its electrical response. Shallow holes drilled
to several hundred meters depth are often used to measure
PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE, VOL. 89, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2001
Fig. 2. Schematic cross section through the earth’s crust showing the key elements of a typical
commercial volcanic-hosted geothermal system. The exploration process typically includes
the sampling and analysis of waters and gases from hot springs and fumaroles, geophysical
measurement of subsurface rock resistivities using the time-domain electromagnetic ( 1 km depth of<
>
investigation) and magnetotellurics ( 5 km depth of investigation) techniques, and both shallow
and deep drilling. The goal of shallow drilling is to identify and map the conductive heat flow
anomaly overlying the geothermal system. The goal of deep drilling is to penetrate the geothermal
reservoir, if it exists, and produced fluids.

conductive heat flow overlying geothermal systems, and to
confirm that the resistivity anomalies are indeed the result of
an active hydrothermal system.
The final and only definitive method to establish the pres-
ence and prove the viability of a geothermal system for power
generation, is drilling into the reservoir itself and producing
fluids to the surface. Multiple wells are required to confirm
the system’s size and to determine the optimum exploitation
strategy.
III. DRILLING
Geothermal drilling dates from the early twentieth cen-
tury. While the earliest geothermal wells were drilled uti-
lizing cable tool technology, most geothermal wells now in
existence were drilled using the rotary method, which is also
widely used in the oil and gas drilling industry. The high tem-
peratures found in geothermal systems initially created prob-
lems in elastomers, in fluids circulated to cool the well, in
cements used to bond the casing to the formation and even
in the strength of the metals used for down hole tubulars, but
the most serious challenges have been overcome in the past
40 years.
Because of the relatively small geothermal market,
technology development has lagged that in the oil and gas
industry. Advanced measurement-while-drilling tools and a
number of logging tools that have improved productivity in
oil and gas are not yet available for high-temperature appli-
cations. Government-sponsored research by the DOE in the
U.S., and NEDO in Japan has helped stimulate development
of some tools.
The principal challenge now facing geothermal drilling
is one of cost reduction. Highly metamorphosed or volcanic
formations found in typical geothermal settings can slow
drilling progress to a small fraction of that achievable in
softer sedimentary formations associated with oil and gas.
Faulting and fracturing of the formations can make it diffi-
cult to maintain orientation of the hole while drilling and the
low formation pressures found in the fractures encountered
during drilling make it extremely difficult to circulate the
fluids, needed to cool and clean the wellbore, back to the
surface. Geothermal wells need to transmit large volume
flows of hot fluid to be commercial, and this requires that
they be completed with large diameter casings.
Fig. 3 illustrates the well design commonly used for
geothermal wells. The master valve in the picture is a
305-mm (12 inch) valve and the production casings are a
273-mm (10-3/4 inch) perforated liner, a 340-mm (13-3/8
inch) liner and tieback. These diameters compare to the
89-mm (3-1/2 inch) tubing and the 76-mm (3 inch) valves
common to oil and gas completions. The added formation
that must be excavated for a geothermal well accounts for

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Fig. 3. Geothermal wellhead and casing schematic.
a large portion of the increased cost relative to oil and gas
wells drilled to the same depth.
A geothermal drilling rig typically used by the industry
is powered by diesel driven generators capable of 3 MW .
This power is distributed through a silicon-controlled recti-
fier system to 1.5 MW electric motors that drive a hoisting
and rotating mechanism, and to the 1.5 MW electric-driven
pumps of the mud-circulating system. A typical drilling loca-
tion may have an additional requirement of 750 kW for mis-
cellaneous rig equipment and personnel housing. The power
requirements are approximately twice the requirement for oil
and gas drilling to the same depth.
To reduce the cost of geothermal wells the two main chal-
lenges are: 1) to devise a more efficient excavation tech-
nology to remove the large quantities of hard, fractured rock
in less time and 2) to develop an improved process for pene-
trating low-pressure formations while removing the rock cut-
tings and cooling the well.
IV. STEAM PRODUCTION
Approximately 90% of geothermal fields in the world are
high temperature and liquid-dominated. From these, a mix-
ture of steam and brine is brought to the surface through
the production wells, and the brine must be separated before
delivering steam to the turbine. In vapor-dominated fields
the wells produce steam only and no brine handling is re-
quired. In lower temperature fields, binary systems are com-
monly used, where hot water is produced, sometimes using
downhole pumps, maintained as a liquid under pressure, and
used to flash a secondary working fluid such as iso-pen-
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tane through heat exchangers [9], [10]. The discussion below
will focus on common industry practice in high temperature,
liquid-dominated fields.
The most common means of separating brine and steam is
in a vertical vessel with a tangential entry using centrifugal
force to separate the steam and brine. After separation of the
steam from the brine, typically at pressures around 1.0 MPa,
the steam is transported to a power plant through pipelines
up to 1 m in diameter and up to 4 km long. A pressure drop
of 0.25 MPa between wellhead and turbine, which is typical
in long pipelines, represents a 7% loss of available energy.
Minor condensation of steam occurs in the pipelines and is
removed in a centrifugal separator, or a vane-type de-mister,
prior to entering the power plant. In cases of high chloride
content in the steam, steam washing can be employed to re-
move the contaminant before admission to the turbine.
Separated brine is usually injected directly back into the
reservoir, but in some fields is disposed of on the surface
(Wairakei, New Zealand; Cerro Prieto, Mexico). In other
cases, it is used for process heating (Kawerau, New Zealand)
to generate additional power in a binary unit (Mak-Ban,
Philippines), or as feedstock for mineral extraction before
being injected back into the reservoir. A plant designed to
recover 30 000 metric tons of zinc annually from geothermal
brines has been constructed at the Salton Sea geothermal
field in California.
Returning the brine to the reservoir has both advantages
and disadvantages. The principal advantages are that the net
withdrawal of mass from the system is greatly reduced and
reservoir pressure declines more slowly, so that well outputs
can be maintained for longer time. In addition it ensures that
no environmental damage can occur from chemical species
(e.g., As, B) in the brine. The principal disadvantage is that
the cool brine may flow directly to certain production wells
before it has been in contact with hot rock long enough to
reheat, causing a reduction in steam output from the produc-
tion wells. This is a common problem because a strong pres-
sure difference builds up between injectors and producers,
and the fractured nature of the rocks in geothermal systems
often allows an unpredictable highly permeable path from
injector to producer. It is usually mitigated by increasing the
separation between injection and production wells. This is
a fruitful area for research, since a better understanding of
permeability structure and heat transfer characteristics in the
reservoir will permit a more efficient use of the resource.
V. POWER PLANTS
Condensing steam turbines normally operate with inlet
pressures between 0.5 and 1.0 MPa, at an isentropic effi-
ciency of 78% to 83%, and with a steam usage rate in the
range of 6–9 kg/kWh. Steam turbines without condensers are
sometimes used during the early development of a field, but
the lack of a condenser leads to the loss of 50% of the avail-
able energy.
Fig. 4 is a process flow diagram for a typical geothermal
turbine with a condenser. In this illustration, steam is sup-
plied from the flash separation process at a single pressure.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE, VOL. 89, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2001
Fig. 4. Geothermal process diagram showing production wells, separator, scrubber, turbine,
condenser, and cooling tower. After being separated from steam, brine is injected back into the
reservoir. Steam is piped to the plant where it passes through a scrubber before entering the
turbine, and is then condensed. Condensed steam is used in the cooling towers where roughly 80%
evaporates, and the remainder is injected back into the reservoir.
Steam exiting the turbine is condensed in a direct contact
condenser, supplied with cold water from a cross-flow
cooling tower. The condensed steam and the cooling water
are returned to the cooling tower.
The design of geothermal turbines has to take into account
the potential for scaling, corrosion, and high moisture con-
tent occurring in the steam. First-stage nozzle diaphragms
can develop a layer of scale that restricts the steam passage.
Geothermal turbines are usually made of the same alloys as
low pressure turbines used in fossil-fired plants, with vari-
ations in the alloy composition of the blades and rotors to
enhance the alloy’s ability to withstand corrosion and stress
corrosion cracking. The last stage of the turbine must accom-
modate high moisture content and minimize blade leading
edge erosion. Both stellite shields and blade surface hard-
ening are used to resist the impingement of moisture. Be-
cause of chemical impurities found in geothermal steam, last-
stage blades are designed for lower maximum stresses than
in fossil-fired plants where steam purity is high. This results
in geothermal turbines being rated for lower steam flows per
square meter of exhaust area than turbines in fossil power
plants. The combined effect of the limited blade length and
the reduced flow rate per unit area limit the maximum size
that can be achieved in a geothermal turbine-generator. Thus
it is common to see three 55 MW units installed in a single
power house, rather than a single 165-MW unit.
The heat rejection system of a geothermal power plant is
3–4 times larger than that of a fossil-fired power plant of
comparable power output because of the low available en-
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ergy per kilogram of geothermal steam. Unless H S pollu-
tion abatement is required, geothermal condensers are direct
contact type, where water from the cooling towers is sprayed
into the steam exiting the turbine. Heat transfer in this type
of condenser is efficient, and high noncondensable gas con-
tents can be accommodated, but because the cooling water
is exposed to CO , H S, and NH , biological growth in the
circulating water must be retarded with biocides. Between
70% and 80% of the steam that enters the turbine is eventu-
ally evaporated in the cooling tower.
A wide range of noncondensable gas contents are found
in geothermal steam, with CO being the dominant species
at typically 90 by weight, followed by H S at typically
5 by weight. Other minor constituents include NH ,
CH , N and H . Noncondensable gases are removed
using compressors and/or steam-driven ejectors (Fig. 5).
For example, the power plants at Tiwi, Philippines, with a
relatively high gas content in steam of 3%, can use either a
two-stage steam jet gas ejector that consumes 71 000 kg/h
of geothermal steam or a hybrid system of first-stage ejector
and second-stage liquid ring vacuum pump consuming
15 150 kg/h of steam and imposing a 1.2% parasitic load on
generation.
VI. U.S. EXPERIENCE
The U.S. has the largest installed geothermal capacity
of any country in the world. As of year 2000 the installed
capacity [11] was 2546 MW . Early geothermal develop-
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Fig. 5. Geothermal power plant process flow diagram, showing direct contact condenser and
hybrid ejector/vacuum pump gas removal system. Steam is supplied from the flash separation
process at a single pressure. Steam exiting the turbine is condensed in a direct contact condenser,
supplied with cold water from a cross-flow cooling tower. The condensed steam and the cooling
water are returned to the cooling tower. Brine, condensate, and cooling tower blow-down are
injected back into the geothermal reservoir.
ment began in the U.S. in the 1920s with shallow drilling
and a 0.25 MW power plant for local use at The Geysers in
California. Further development began in the 1950s when
deeper and more extensive drilling at The Geysers developed
steam for the first commercial geothermal power plant in the
U.S. (1960: PG&E Unit-1: 12.5 MW .) Geothermal capacity
grew steadily through the 1960s and 1970s and into the early
1980s, primarily at The Geysers. Then following the 1979
energy crisis, with the availability of long term power sales
contracts, geothermal fields were developed in California,
Nevada, Utah, and Hawaii beginning in the 1980s. The U.S.
installed capacity peaked in the early-1990s at more than
2800 MW . Braun and McCluer [12] described the status
of the industry at that time. Since then the retirement of
older and underutilized plants has resulted in a reduction in
capacity. The only new geothermal developments that have
been completed in the U.S. since 1993 are in the Imperial
Valley in California.
All U.S. geothermal development is in western states
where widespread faulting and young volcanism are found.
California is the state with the highest geothermal capacity
(2294 MW ), followed by Nevada (196 MW ), Utah (31
MW ), and Hawaii (25 MW ). The Geysers, which is a
vapor-dominated system, is the largest field in the U.S. and
represents about half the U.S. total capacity. The Salton Sea
and Coso fields in Southern California, with capacities of
267 and 260 MW respectively, are next in size. Additional
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smaller fields of 100 MW are distributed through Eastern
California, Northern Nevada, Central Utah, and the big
island of Hawaii.
VII. INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCE
The first geothermal power development in the world was
in Larderello, Italy in 1904 (0.015 MW ). This development
was upgraded to 0.25 MW in 1913, but it wasn’t until
1938 that modern commercial development began with an
expansion to 69 MW . The field was subsequently expanded
during the 1950s and 1960s and then upgraded in the 1980s
and 1990s to its current 547 MW . The next significant
geothermal development was at the Wairakei field in New
Zealand, that was first brought online in 1958. Following
this pioneering work in Italy and New Zealand, additional
large-scale international geothermal developments came
online in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s in Japan, Mexico,
and The Philippines. The 1990s saw continued expansion of
capacity in The Philippines, Mexico, and significant growth
in Indonesia. In 1999, geothermal power was generated
in 21 countries from 85 sites, with 94% of the total from
eight countries. These eight largest producers are U.S.
(31%), Philippines (19%), Mexico (12%), Indonesia (9%),
Italy (9%), Japan (7%), New Zealand (5%), Iceland (2%).
Seventy-five percent of the worldwide total is produced
PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE, VOL. 89, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2001
from the 20 sites with more than 100 MW installed gener-
ating capacity (Fig. 1). The cumulative worldwide installed
capacity [13] is about 7974 MW and the growth of capacity
has been 17% from 1995–2000.
VIII. GLOBAL POTENTIAL
Geothermal energy is available in the earth to produce
many orders of magnitude more electric power than the 49
TWh/yr currently being produced, once the technology, reg-
ulatory environment and marketplace are favorable. Roughly
joules of heat energy are stored in the earth [14] and the
global rate of heat loss is estimated at joules per year [2],
of which 70% is lost in the oceans and 30% from the conti-
nents. The thermal energy stored in the upper 10 km of the
earth’s crust below the U.S., relative to surface ambient tem-
perature, is estimated [15] at 3 10 joules, or 10 times the
annual energy demand in the U.S. At this time, only 6 10
joules per year of geothermal power are being generated in
the U.S.
A survey of geothermal experts [16] was conducted
in 1999 to estimate the country-by-country potential of
geothermal power, and the results indicated that 70 GW ,
or roughly nine times the existing installed capacity, could
be produced with current technology. With enhanced tech-
nology, the survey suggested that this could be doubled to
140 GW from known high-temperature reservoirs, resulting
in 1000 TWh of potential geothermal power generation
annually. In practice however, local market and other
economic factors limit the expansion from known sources.
For example, Indonesia has an abundance of geothermal
resources but after several years of aggressive exploration
and developmental activity in the 1990s, investment in
geothermal projects virtually stopped in 1998 because of
financial and political instability in that country.
The cost of geothermal power from a typical high tem-
perature, high permeability liquid-dominated reservoir, using
conventional condensing turbines, is estimated to be in the
range $2000/kW to $2500/kW for a project of roughly 100
MW in size. A breakdown of the cost components is ap-
proximately as follows.
Exploration & Development Drilling: 35%.
Infrastructure: 10%.
Surface steam and brine facilities: 15%.
Power Plant: 40%.
Rapid expansion beyond known sources can be conceived
once it becomes cost-effective to explore for “hidden” sys-
tems. The term “hidden” is here meant to depict those hy-
drothermal systems at 200 C–350 C located within 3 km
depth, which have no surface expression of hot springs, fu-
maroles or gas seeps, and whose detection would have to
rely principally on geological and geophysical prospecting
methods. In the oil and gas industry, the technology for de-
tecting reservoirs with no surface “leaks” is well developed,
but the geothermal industry has yet to develop a suite of
exploration tools to adequately lower the dry hole risk in
prospects which have no thermal fluids at the surface.
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The greatest promise for the long term lies in “Heat
Mining”—extracting energy from rock with insufficient
temperature or permeability to permit vigorous natural con-
vection, where artificial stimulation is required to enhance
permeability, and a surface source of fluid is required as
the circulating medium. Resource temperature has a strong
influence on the conversion efficiency of heat to electricity
and Armstead and Tester [17] estimated that the conversion
efficiency increased from less than 5% at 100 C to more
than 25% at 300 C rock temperature. The depth at which
240 C is reached by drilling depends upon the local value of
terrestrial heat flow, the presence or absence of groundwater
convection and the thermal conductivity of the rocks. In
most locations the ranges of these parameters dictate that
240 C will be encountered shallower than 10 km.
This promise of vast untapped pollution-free energy re-
sources encouraged both the U.S. DOE and later the U.K. to
invest heavily in HDR demonstration projects in the 1980s and
1990s, but limited technical success and funding problems
brought both projects to a halt. The EC is now proceeding
with a demonstration project at Soultz-sous-Forêts, France,
where a 5 km well was recently drilled to reach 200 C.
IX. SUSTAINABILITY OF GEOTHERMAL ENERGY
The rate of heat extraction from a 100 MW geothermal
power project during production is of the order of 100
W /m from the drilled area, typically an order of magni-
tude more than pre-exploitation surface heat flows. So at
commercial withdrawal rates, the heat input from below
is insufficient to sustain production at the fully developed
rate. From an investor’s standpoint, maximizing withdrawal
over a 10–20 year period is a more attractive option than
operating at a lower capacity for hundreds or thousands
of years. Commercial developments typically ramp up
production in the first few years, maintain it constant for a
period of 15–25 years, and then allow a natural decline once
the cost of makeup wells to maintain steam supply cannot
be economically justified.
After 30 years of production at fully developed commercial
rates, much of the available heat still remains in the reservoir.
This presents an opportunity for secondary recovery projects,
such as the treated wastewater injection projects at The Gey-
sers field, where production has depleted fluid mass from the
reservoir much more efficiently than it has depleted the avail-
able heat. Now 0.4 m /s (9 million gallons per day) of treated
wastewater is pumped 46 km from a nearby town to The Gey-
sers, and has been shown to increase production by 68 MW .
A second water injection project currently under construction
willpump0.5m /s(11milliongallonsperday)oftreatedwaste-
water 66 km from the city of Santa Rosa to The Geysers.
The question of whether geothermal is truly a sustain-
able energy source therefore depends on the extraction rate
chosen for each resource. Investment criteria using discount
rates of 15% or more drive a commercial developer to maxi-
mize field production over a period of 10–20 years, and allow
a natural decline in later years. At a significantly lower rate
the field may remain productive for hundreds of years.
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Table 1
Land Use at the Gunung Salak 330 MW Project, Indonesia. Total
Area is 175 ha (1.75 km )
Pritchett [18] used a numerical model to show that a field
which is produced at an average rate of 60 MW for 50 years,
if then shut in for 100 years, can subsequently produce for an-
other 50 years at an average rate of 40 MW . If left shut-in
for 1000 years, thermal recovery is such that 90% of the orig-
inal average capacity can be achieved for the next 50 years.
This process was not optimized, since the production–injec-
tion geometry was not changed to increase the efficiency of
heat extraction. In practice it is anticipated that fields which
have been operated until pressures and enthalpies have been
reduced to uneconomic levels could be subject to a number
of modifications designed to boost production at the end of
the first period of production, or after an extended shut-in
period. Such modifications include placement of new pro-
duction and injection sites to take advantage of previously
inaccessible heat, and recharge of the reservoir with external
fluid in areas still hot, but low in pressure.
Time scales for the natural renewal of geothermal systems
are of the order of 10 to 10 years, whereas fossil systems
renew at time scales of 10 to 10 years.
X. ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS
Geothermal power projects have a number of advantages
from an environmental viewpoint: small footprint, no ex-
ternal fuel sources requiring excavation, transportation, and
storage, and the ability to dispose of unwanted by-products
back underground from whence they came. The 330 MW
Gunung Salak project [19] in Indonesia will be used as an
example in this paper.
The area of land utilized for the development of the energy
source and the power conversion facilities at Salak is 1.75
km . As many as seven wells are drilled from a single lo-
cation so that land use is minimized. Six 55 MW steam tur-
bines are housed at two locations, each with three units. Elec-
tric-generating stations require only enough land to house
steam turbines, generators, switchyards, and cooling towers.
Table 1 shows land use requirements at the Salak field.
Salak is a liquid-dominated reservoir which generates
3.5 m /s of brine with a dissolved solids content of 19 000
mg/kg along with the steam used for power generation.
All the brine is returned to the reservoir through injection
wells. The power plant utilizes a condensing turbine, and a
second by-product of the process is steam condensate. In
Salak, the steam condensate, which has a total dissolved
solids content of 100 mg/kg, is used for cooling tower
make-up, eliminating the need to use surface waters for
cooling. Excess condensate and cooling tower blowdown
water are piped to two condensate injection wells and put
back into the geothermal reservoir. In some locations it may
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be economically feasible to treat the condensate to remove
contaminants and use it as a source of industrial, agricultural
or potable water [20]. An inventory of products generated at
the Salak project is given in Table 2.
Cooling towers reject heat from the system, and are
designed to limit plumes, water droplet drift, and gases that
exsolve during aeration. CO emissions at Salak are roughly
an order of magnitude lower than those from fossil-fired
plants which average roughly 500–1000 MWh. Sulfur
emissions from geothermal plants are also much lower
than fossil-fired plants. Traces of H S are encountered in
the steam at Salak, and this gas is diluted with air over
cooling towers to below Indonesian emission standards
of 35 mg/m in the surrounding atmosphere (Table 2). In
fields where higher concentrations of H S are encountered,
the malodorous gas can be scrubbed and oxidized using
commercial abatement processes.
During exploitation of geothermal resources, solids are
produced in the form of drill cuttings or scale deposits. In
Bulalo, Philippines, solid waste is made into a slurry and
injected back into the reservoir [21]. In Salak, Indonesia,
the waste is used beneficially in construction materials.
Geothermal solids can be rendered nonhazardous by cement
fixation [22].
XI. CONCLUSION
Geothermal energy is abundant, but only a very small
fraction can be converted commercially to electricity with
today’s technology. From 1980 to 2000, the installed
geothermal capacity worldwide doubled, but in the past
two years the rate of growth slowed and the geothermal
industry has consolidated and downsized. This was due to
the following factors.
• The most prospective and accessible sites have already
been exploited in many developed countries. Many
prospective sites are scenic and occur in national parks,
inaccessible to development.
• Economic problems in Asia in the late 1990s have dis-
couraged private developers, particularly in Indonesia,
which has abundant resources.
• Multilateral lending agency support and government
incentives for geothermal development have been re-
duced.
• Low natural gas prices in the 1990s, and price reduc-
tions in fossil-fired power plants, made it more difficult
for geothermal power to compete in the marketplace.
Geothermal is at a commercial disadvantage to fossil fuels,
because the effect of having to drill enough wells to supply
full plant capacity at startup is the economic equivalent of
purchasing most of the fuel required for the next 20 years
in a fossil-fired plant, prior to bringing the plant on-line.
However a significant opportunity for geothermal develop-
ment is emerging as the carbon credit marketplace forms.
Carbon credit trading, once implemented, will allow the clear
environmental advantages of geothermal to be realizable to
project developers as financial value. As the costs for nat-
ural gas increase geothermal power will be able to compete
PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE, VOL. 89, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2001
Table 2
Liquids, Gases and Heat Processed in the Generation of 330 MW (gross). Six 55 MW Units
at the Gunung Salak Geothermal Field, Indonesia
in markets where natural gas infrastructure exists. So there
are positive signs that conventional high-grade geothermal
power development will grow again in the medium term. The
challenge to the geothermal industry in the short term is to
continue to lower the cost of development to remain compet-
itive with other power sources.
In the medium term, the greatest opportunity exists in the
development of technology to:
1) recover the stranded heat remaining in reservoirs after
conventional development;
2) stimulate fractures in the hot impermeable margins of
exploited systems;
3) explore for “hidden” systems.
In the long term HDR holds the greatest promise, but to
develop cost-effective heat mining technology will take a
coordinated effort by government and industry over several
decades. Extracting a significant fraction of the available
geothermal heat commercially presents a considerable
challenge but an eminently worthy one, as the world faces
an increasing need for nonfossil, nonpolluting energy in the
decades to come.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank the management of Un-
ocal Corporation for permission to publish this paper.
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Kenneth H. Williamson received the Ph.D. de-
gree in geophysics from Imperial College, U.K.
He then worked with the British Geological
Survey for five years, carrying out geothermal re-
search and exploration, mainly in the Caribbean
and South Pacific. He joined Union Oil Company
of California (Unocal), Santa, Rosa, CA, in
1981, where he has worked for 20 years on
geothermal projects in the U.S., Latin America,
Europe, and Asia. He is currently general
Manager of Unocal’s Geothermal Technology
and Services Group.
1791
 Richard P. Gunderson received the B.S. and Darrell L. Gallup received the B.S. degree in
M.S. degrees in earth science from the University chemistry from Brigham Young University and
of California at Santa Cruz, where he studied the the Ph.D. degree in inorganic chemistry from
origin of volcanic rocks from northern Mexico. Utah State University.
He has worked for Unocal Corporation, Santa He is a Senior Consulting Chemist with
Rosa, CA, in the geothermal industry for the past Unocal Corporation, Santa Rosa, CA. He has
18 years. His initial geothermal work was in the been with Unocal for 22 years and previously
development of The Geysers geothermal field in worked for Texaco. His areas of expertise
California. Following that, he has worked as a include geothermal, oil and gas production
Geothermal Explorationist in the Western U.S., chemistry, and water treatment/remediation and
Turkey, Mexico, Indonesia, and much of Central has authored numerous patents.
and South America. He is currently a project Geologist for Unocal’s
geothermal fields in The Philippines and Indonesia.

Kevin Kitz has worked on geothermal fields

Gerald M. Hamblin joined Unocal Corporation, and power plants in California, Indonesia, and
Santa Rosa, CA, in 1977 as a Drilling Foreman the Philippines during his more than 15 years
for Geothermal Technology and Services. He has with Unocal Corporation, Santa Rosa, CA. He
subsequently held the positions of Drilling Super- has worked in conceptual and detailed design
intendent and Drilling Manager. His areas of re- of greenfield power plants, expansion and
sponsibility have included California, Utah, New retrofit of existing power plants, construction,
Mexico, the Philippines, and Indonesia. commissioning, and operation. He has authored
patents in geothermal technology in materials
applications, process chemistry, and machine
design.

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