Water use in the development and operation of geothermal power plants.

Life Cycle Water Consumption and Water Resource Assessment for Utility-Scale Geothermal Systems: An In-Depth Analysis of Historical and Forthcoming EGS Projects

“…When normalized for electricity production, the average geofluid loss for the four wet-cooled flash systems in Table D-1 is 2.4 gal/kWh. This matches well with the previous Argonne estimate of 2.7 gal/kWh for the flash scenario modeled in GETEM (Clark et al 2011). …”

“…Previously, Argonne National Laboratory (Argonne) considered the life cycle water requirements of geothermal electric power generation systems and the water quality of geothermal waters (Clark et al 2011). The life cycle water analysis revealed that the consumptive losses during operations were significant to the overall water requirements of geothermal power plants.…”

“…Data used in Clark et al (2011) were limited to those made available by the California Department of Conversation, Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources (2010). In addition to incorporating operational water use data as described in environmental documentation such as EAs or EISs, data were also obtained from the Nevada Division of Minerals and the Nevada Division of Water Resources.…”

“…For consistency, these scenario parameters are unchanged from previous studies (Clark et al 2011. The scenarios were modeled in the DOE's Geothermal Electricity Technology Evaluation Model (GETEM), and the simulation was run multiple times in GETEM to create a range of possible outcomes (EIA 2011).…”

“…In the previous report of this series, operational water consumption was determined to be the greatest contributor to water consumption over the life cycle for all geothermal technologies (Clark et al 2011). These estimates for consumption, however, were based upon limited production and injection data.…”