1 | US DOE Geothermal Officeeere.energy.gov Public Service of Colorado Ponnequin Wind Farm Geothermal Technologies Office 2014 Geothermal Case Studies Challenge Overview, Rules, And Important Dates Spring 2014

2 | US DOE Geothermal Officeeere.energy.gov Goals and Objectives The overall goal of this project is for students to participate and contribute to a crowd-sourced repository of public-access geothermal resource information: –The repository is managed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) through the Open Energy Information (OpenEI) wiki-based platform. Goals for NREL: –To promote and encourage geothermal energy education amongst university professors and students. –To create a greater public awareness of geothermal energy. –To add new geothermal area case studies to OpenEI. Goals for Students: –Allow students to gain knowledge about many aspects of geothermal energy from exploration practices to development and utilization. –Provide students with the opportunity to develop valuable research skills that will be beneficial for the remainder of their academic careers. –Students will become experts on the geothermal area they are researching. –To win the Geothermal Case Study Challenge, gain recognition for excellence in geothermal research, and present research at the 2014 GRC conference!

3 | US DOE Geothermal Officeeere.energy.gov Project Overview Numerous universities around the country will be participating in the challenge. Student groups that produce the best case studies will be awarded paid travel to present their work in a special session at the 2014 GRC annual meeting in Portland Oregon, Sept 28th – Oct. 1st. Students will choose a geothermal resource area within the U.S., research the area, write a case study detailing the exploration and development history of the area, and populate their resource area’s webpage on

4 | US DOE Geothermal Officeeere.energy.gov Geothermal Case Study Challenge Rules Students may work independently or in groups of 2-3. Students will choose a geothermal area to research: –Each individual/group will choose 1 area that interests them from a list of geothermal areas found on the challenge webpage under the Areas tab. –Registration for geothermal areas will be on a first-come first-serve basis, so don’t delay in choosing your area. Note: some geothermal areas have much more available information than others. This will be taken into account during judging. Case Studies are organized into three components: –Narratives –Exploration Activities –Data tables NREL has provided a template for each component of the case study; case studies should be prepared using the templates as working documents.

5 | US DOE Geothermal Officeeere.energy.gov Scope of the Project (Narratives) The written narratives will constitute the bulk of the content produced for this project. There are three main topics that must be discussed in the narratives: –General Overview: history, development, permitting, environmental issues, future plans, etc. –Technical Info: exploration history, well field description, research and development, power plants, infrastructure, technical problems, etc. –Geology: regional geology, tectonic setting, structure, stratigraphy, hydrothermal system, reservoir models, heat source, geochemistry, etc. Narratives should be thorough but concise. Students should try to find information for as many of the topics in the template as possible.

6 | US DOE Geothermal Officeeere.energy.gov Scope of the Project (Exploration Activities) Students will complete a list of exploration activities in excel using the spreadsheet template provided. The goal is to include all documented geothermal exploration activities that have been conducted in your area. –The activities list should focus primarily on investigations that were conducted for geothermal exploration or development. –Prior investigations conducted for other purposes do not need to be included in the list, unless the information gained from those studies was later used for geothermal resource identification, evaluation, or development. The activities portion of this project is very important— companies and researchers will use the activities list in the future to learn which exploration practices have worked best in the past and which ones have not.

7 | US DOE Geothermal Officeeere.energy.gov Scope of the Project (Data Tables) Data tables are include in the website so that specific data can be queried and searched by anyone researching different types of geothermal resources. The Data Tables spreadsheet template should be populated with as much information as possible. It may not be possible to fill out all sections of the Data Tables template, as some information may be proprietary or otherwise unavailable. This will be taken into account during judging.

8 | US DOE Geothermal Officeeere.energy.gov OpenEI Geothermal Resource Area Example

9 | US DOE Geothermal Officeeere.energy.gov Exploration Activity Page Example

10 | US DOE Geothermal Officeeere.energy.gov Judging Criteria Formatting case studies and inputting the information into the OpenEI webpage will also be a part of the judging criteria: –Finalized webpages should have a clean and organized appearance. –There should be no broken links. –Images and tables should display correctly. –All referenced information should cite the source material, and in-line citations should be properly formatted for display on OpenEI. As with any research project, correct referencing is very important and will be a significant portion of the final evaluation. A grading rubric with detailed evaluation criteria is available on the challenge webpage. re Projects will be judged based on: -How well researched the case study is (Completeness/Focus) -How well written the final product is (Conciseness/Clarity) -Quality of work -Organization

11 | US DOE Geothermal Officeeere.energy.gov Important Deadlines Group registration 2/25/2014 Sign-ups for geothermal area of choice 2/29/2014 Reference list submission 4/20/2014 Report submission to professor 5/1/2014 Professor scoring rubric submission to NREL Final report submission to NREL 5/15/2014 Case study uploaded to OpenEI 5/15/2014 These deadlines are the latest dates set by NREL—your professor may choose to adjust some deadlines to accommodate the class schedule. 5/15/2014

12 | US DOE Geothermal Officeeere.energy.gov Geothermal Case Study Challenge Winners The students/groups that produce the highest quality case studies will be awarded with paid travel to present their research in a special session at the 2014 annual GRC meeting in Portland Oregon, Sept 28 th through Oct. 1 st.