DOE’s Geothermal Technologies Office (GTO) will award up to $7M for projects that advance geothermal development by addressing two significant barriers: understanding subsurface state of stress and managing lost circulation events in drilling. Improved understanding of the stress state in geothermal fields will lead to significant cost reductions at several stages of the development cycle, including improved drilling success rates and sustainability of reservoirs over time. Improved knowledge of subsurface stress has the potential to improve both well targeting and reservoir sustainability – two primary drivers of cost. Another challenge that can contribute to the high cost of reservoir access is the loss of fluids to surrounding rock during drilling, or lost circulation events (LCEs). Because geothermal drilling operations tend to target zones of highly fractured and altered material, lost circulation is more common in geothermal drilling than in other applications and can represent 20% of the costs for exploratory wells and reservoir development. Effective assessment of the subsurface stress and being able to mitigate and manage lost circulation events are critical to improving the efficiency of geothermal energy development and ultimately can play a major role in increasing domestic energy affordability. With this funding opportunity, GTO is seeking to sponsor early-stage R&D that will advance the state of the art in each of these related areas.

The full Funding Opportunity Announcement is published at EERE-Exchange.energy.gov.

For questions and answers pertaining to this FOA, please reference the DE-FOA-0002083: Subsurface Stress and Lost Circulation in Geothermal Drilling FAQ Log in FOA Documents.

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