Hot Dry Rock

TerraThermo™ develops Renewable Energy Storage and Low Carbon Power Generation projects in Europe by deploying Hot Dry Rock (“HDR”) technologies.

TerraThermo™ licenses those technologies best suited for each project and develops its own intellectual property associated with geothermal energy storage and power generation projects.

For Projekt THERMO in Lower Saxony, Germany, TerraThermo™ is partnered with Sage Geosystems Inc to utilize EarthStore™ and Battery+™ technologies to develop this first-of-a-kind baseload power generation project.

HDR technologies can benefit a wide range of power storage and generation systems.

  • Energy Suppliers

    Energy Suppliers

    Baseload grid support
    Variable arbitrage
    Energy increase with Battery+
    Power storage for later use
    Seasonal storage
    Conversion of coal and thermal plants

  • Transmission System Operators

    Transmission System Operators

    Grid balancing & stability
    Long-duration backup (hours/days)

  • Geothermal Operators

    Geothermal Operators

    Converting underperforming or failed hydrothermal/EGS wells if brine flow rates or temperatures not achieved

  • Ground PV

    Ground PV

    Variable arbitrage
    Energy increase with Battery+
    Short or long duration storage
    Seasonal storage
    Convert to baseload power plant

  • Wind Farms

    Wind Farms

    Variable arbitrage
    Energy increase with Battery+
    Short or long duration storage
    Seasonal storage
    Convert to baseload power plant

  • Oil & Gas Operators

    Oil & Gas Operators

    Repurpose end-of-life wells to storage
    Delay abandonment
    Decarbonise power supply for operations

How do the different Hot Dry Rock technologies harvest heat and power from the Earth?

  • Open Loop EGS

    Open Loop

    Fracturing creates an artificial reservoir

    Multiple wells: higher CAPEX/MW

    - Fractures must connect across multiple wells
    - Requires continuous injection of large volumes of water at high pressure (10’000 to 15’000 PSI)
    - Fluid must disperse evenly across fractures to avoid short circuiting into a single flow channel
    - Huge parasitic loads from friction pressures

  • Sage Geosystems EGS

    Sage Geosystems EGS

    Geopressured Geothermal System

    Single well: less CAPEX/MW

    - Off-the-shelf oil & gas drilling technology
    - Gravity fractures are additive, do not connect across wells
    - Injection pressures < 5’000 PSI
    - Fluid dispersion is not material to design
    - Scalable from storage (<150°C) to baseload power (>150°C)
    - Gravity fracture is operated above fracture opening pressure, so parasitic loads from friction are greatly reduced compared to open loop EGS

  • Closed Loop

    Closed Loop

    Boreholes form a “radiator” shape underground

    Single & multiple wells: requires tens of km of well length for sufficient surface area for heat transfer
    - New technology is needed for complex directional drilling and well completions
    - No connectivity with surrounding rock, conduction heating only
    - Lower power output per well than EGS

Benefits

  • EarthStore™ Geology-independent, short or long duration mechanical pressure storage with round-trip efficiencies 70-75% and power generation capacity of 3.0MWe net per well.

  • Battery+™ Geology-dependent power generation with round-trip efficiencies up to 200% and capacity of >3.0MWe net per well.

    • Battery+™ provides potential to 2x energy produced through geothermal heating of injected water.

Co-location

We can offer co-location of renewables power generation to convert existing Ground PV, Onshore Wind and Thermal into integrated and scalable baseload renewable power generation plants.

Sustainable & Secure

We offer storage and power production technologies that are more sustainable and raw material-secure than any other storage or renewable power generation system.

Our energy storage does not rely on critical materials necessary for other renewable storage and energy generation systems.