GEOSTATISTICAL EVALUATION OF KNOWN GEOTHERMAL SYSTEMS IN THE GREAT BASIN REGION, USA

Geothermal energy is a clean, renewable energy source derived from heat in the shallow crust and has the potential to play a key role in the transition away from fossil fuels. The Great Basin region (GBR) in the western United States is a world-class geothermal province with over 1 GWe installed nameplate capacity. Previous studies indicate significantly more geothermal potential than what has currently been developed. Much of this undeveloped potential could reside in hidden or blind geothermal systems, which lack surface expressions such as hot springs or steam vents and are therefore more difficult to locate and utilize. The INnovative Geothermal Exploration through Novel Investigations Of Undiscovered Systems (INGENIOUS) project aims to discover new, economically viable hidden geothermal systems in the GBR by building on previous work in play fairway analysis and machine learning. The INGENIOUS GBR study area encompasses most of Nevada, western Utah, southern Idaho, southeastern Oregon, and easternmost California. A key objective of this project is to develop an exploration workflow to reduce geothermal exploration risks for hidden geothermal systems.

Known geothermal systems can be utilized as benchmarks to evaluate and compare the characteristics of hidden and non-hidden geothermal systems. While many studies have focused on individual or subset comparisons of known geothermal systems, it is challenging to directly compare all of the known geothermal systems across the GBR due to limitations in regional scale data compilations. This study leverages 15 newly updated regional geological, geophysical, and geochemical datasets that were compiled over the GBR study area in Phase I of the INGENIOUS project. Data were interpolated and sampled from the 15 regional data sets to estimate values at over 350 known geothermal systems in the GBR study area. The sampled data were used in statistical comparisons of known hidden and non-hidden systems, and cluster analysis was utilized to evaluate variability between known systems. Understanding this variability will provide key insights for the exploration and characterization of hidden geothermal systems in the GBR.