Geothermal well operation and maintenance

Abstract

Proper maintenance and operation of geothermal wells is vitally important in achieving success for a geothermal project. The geothermal industry grew rapidly worldwide in the last decades of the past century. These assets are aging and in some cases repairs or rebuilding are called for in order to extend their life and to maintain generation capacity. Geothermal wells have been found to be an extremely reliable source of power and in fact it is best if the wells can be allowed to run continuously. Considerable experience has been gained in how best to operate and maintain the geothermal wells. The things described here are mainly from experience gained in Iceland where 50 high-temperature wells are currently in operation and some 320 low-temperature wells, several over 40 years in age. The paper presents an overview of how to detect whether something is abnormal in the behaviour of a well and in deciding what can be done if the problem is related to the well itself. Methods as to how to start and kill wells are described. How to combat scaling with reaming or by inhibition is also described.