Zanskar, a geothermal energy firm that uses artificial intelligence to identify and tap underground heat sources, announced it has drilled a successful geothermal well at a site in Humboldt County in Northern Nevada.
Aubry DeReuil, head of geoscience at Zanskar who is responsible for developing the company’s portfolio of subsurface projects nationwide, said she believed the Pumpernickel well was the first of what would be many such discoveries by the company in Nevada.
“We have really huge growth goals,” DeReuil said. “And resources in Nevada are at the heart of that. We found one, but that’s not going to stop us from finding more.”
Aubry DeReuil is head of geoscience at Zanskar. Photo by: Courtesy of Zanskar
DeReuil explained that geothermal refers to heat from the Earth, so geothermal energy is generated from the planet’s internal heat.
“The narrative has basically been that most of the geothermal systems are active at the surface,” she said. “And they might have hot springs at the surface, but Zanskar operates under this thesis that it’s kind of like oil and gas 100 years ago where maybe there were seeps of oil at the surface, but the real reservoir — the real potential — are these hidden giants at depth.”
Pumpernickel shows limited surface signs of geothermal activity and, while it was briefly explored in the past, the site had mostly been ignored until now, according to Dustin Holcomb, the fluid minerals program manager at the Nevada Division of Minerals, the state’s regulatory authority for all geothermal, oil and gas drilling operations.
It could be the state’s largest geothermal power facility, supplying reliable, carbon-free electricity to the grid within three years.
“Zanskar managed to dig up some old data from drilling operations there, and decided to give it a try,” Holcomb said. “And they found what had been overlooked and discovered that this Pumpernickel site has a really high potential for a pretty significant-size power plant.”
Zanskar believes there are a lot more conventional geothermal systems that haven’t been discovered in Nevada — geothermal upwellings that don’t reach the surface, he said.
“The only way to really discover them is to drill,” Holcomb said.
Zanskar’s strategy is temperature-driven, DeReuil said. The company goes to a site, measures temperatures and starts “constraining the system” once they identify that those temperatures are related to a geothermal resource.
Zanskar built its Nevada portfolio this way, she said, noting it’s especially promising because the state has numerous similar geothermal systems already in place.
“We kind of came at it with this idea of like, well, if no one’s out there drilling anymore, no one’s homesteading in Nevada anymore, nobody’s poking holes out there and measuring temperature gradients — we should go do that,” she said. “And that’s what’s really driven our campaign out there.”
Experts at Zanskar use artificial intelligence to expedite and increase the accuracy of the company’s predictions related to areas for exploration and temperature, DeReuil said.
“We’re really putting tools in the hands of geologists and engineers to make geothermal exploration cheaper and faster and more accurate,” DeReuil said.
Nevada is “the heart” of geothermal in the Western U.S., DeReuil said, with many “fault-hosted” geothermal systems and producing plants, and a legacy of exploration and existing foundation from other geothermal companies.
As a result, Zanskaralready has an understanding of the physics and the thermodynamics of the system, the geology and the subsurface distribution of the resource, she said.
“But there’s a lot more of them,” DeReuil said. “And many of them are these kind of forgotten, hidden, underutilized or undiscovered fields that we have at the core of our portfolio.”
Discoveries like Pumpernickel mean well field development, she said, which in and of itself will promote job creation and economic growth in the state. Ideally, such projects then evolve into power plants and lead to the development of a skilled workforce — maybe 20 jobs per site, and bringing people to rural communities.
“During the construction and then procurement phase of our development, they’ll be driving a lot more growth in the area, bringing people to these rural areas,” DeReuil said. “And then once we build a plant … that creates many jobs and ideally benefits the community.”
Another benefit of geothermal is its small footprint, she said, and the fact that it can’t really be seen. It’s typically on just a handful of acres, DeReuil continued, and while it does provide opportunity for economic growth, job creation and stable electricity prices, it is quiet and small and can coexist with other land uses.
“Like if there’s agriculture or grazing in the area, the geothermal system or the production of geothermal energy is pretty low impact to the environment around it,” DeReuil said. “So whether it’s the natural ecologic setting or other land uses that individuals are taking advantage of, it’s very low impact.”
It’s also completely carbon-free, she said, and any fluid Zanskar produces from its wells is put back into the ground.
“So, we pull this hot water out of the ground at high flow rates,” DeReuil said. “We take the heat and generate mechanical energy. We take mechanical energy (and) generate electrical energy, put those electrons on the grid and then we reinject that fluid. So, it’s a closed loop system. There are no emissions associated with it.”
Geothermal energy is a renewable, 24/7, what’s called “baseload” source of energy, Holcomb said, and can make up for when solar and wind aren’t working.
Nevada was one of the first states to utilize geothermal energy, Holcomb said, with its first geothermal power plants coming online in the 1980s. More than two dozen plants are active in the state today. Geothermal energy makes up about 8% of the total power generated in Nevada, he said.
It’s less expensive to drill in Nevada, where geothermal production wells are only about 4,000 feet, Holcomb said. Other states trying to produce geothermal energy must go well over 10,000, he said.
Nevada is the second largest geothermal energy producer in the nation, just behind California, and it has the highest potential for geothermal energy production, Holcomb said.
“That really comes down to our unique geology that makes up the state of Nevada,” Holcomb said. “… So, our crust isn’t as thick as other places throughout the continent of North America. So, you don’t need to drill as far to reach the super hot temperatures that geothermal energy needs to produce.”
The Nevada Division of Minerals’ role involves ensuring that Zanskar’s well designs protect the state’s groundwater source, that the company doesn’t waste the geothermal resource and that all workers in and around the geothermal property are protected and safe from any blowout potential, Holcomb said.
When Zanskar goes to a site and drills for a resource, it is interested both in protecting the national resources in the subsurface — like fresh drinking water — and protecting the reservoir. It conducts testing to inform the well’s integrity also, DeReuil said.
“We don’t want to degrade the reservoir, and we want to build things that last,” she said. “So when we go out and drill a well — ensuring that that well is drilled with integrity, so that it can last and feed a plant for the next 30 or 40 or 50 years.