Geothermal Technology for Utility-Scale Power Generation

How can a systems-level approach address challenges in a rapidly evolving renewable energy sector?

After years of relatively slow growth, U.S. geothermal power capacity increased 8% between 2020 and 2024, reflecting renewed industry momentum. A convergence of market, policy, and technology factors is drawing new investment, startup activity, and public attention to the sector: 

• Private investment in next-generation geothermal increased 80% year over year in 2025, reaching nearly $2.2 billion.
• Geothermal energy satisfies growing demand for "clean firm" energy — especially compared to variable renewables like solar and wind. The reliability of geothermal energy is improving, as demonstrated by several utility-scale projects drawing on geothermal fields to heat entire towns or provide electricity to tens of thousands of homes.
• The Department of Energy highlights "next-generation geothermal" as one technology solution that can help accommodate the power demand by growing domestic data centers, which is expected to double or triple energy usage by 2028. 
• While other renewables have suffered cutbacks, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBB) preserves tax credits and other incentives for geothermal power projects.

• Another major growth influence is the influx of labor and technologies from the petroleum industry.

  Seasoned expertise in drilling and hydraulic fracturing techniques is helping lower geothermal development costs.

What challenges face the geothermal sector? 

Despite accelerating growth and high potential, geothermal development comes with a variety of technical challenges that are often complex and deeply intertwined.

Evolving standards 

As in many energy sectors, geothermal design and performance standards are evolving, but there is no technical organization defining end-to-end requirements for utility-scale geothermal operations. Developers often rely on an amalgamation of best practices — for example, the American Petroleum Institute (API) provides guidance for drilling, completion equipment, and casing, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) covers electrical and power-plant components. While these standards address important aspects of geothermal development, they are not intended to function as an integrated framework. As a result, questions can arise at the interfaces between subsurface resources, well infrastructure, and surface facilities, where overall system performance often depends on how those elements work together.

"Unlike more mature energy sectors, geothermal does not always operate under a unified set of design or performance standards."

Gaps in expertise

Many geothermal technologies borrow heavily from the petroleum sector, bringing a natural synergy between the two industries, including deep experience in drilling, well construction, and subsurface characterization. Technological advances link geothermal and petroleum too. Directional drilling and hydraulic fracturing techniques from oil and gas are helping geothermal developers drill more accurately and lower costs. Some projects now use high-accuracy automated measurement-while-drilling (MWD) systems to drill closed-loop wells.

But petroleum expertise may not fully encompass the requirements of managing geothermal resources, such as ensuring thermal sustainability, overseeing sustained high flow rates, and mitigating various corrosion mechanisms. Downhole oil and gas skills may also not address the critical topside requirements of geothermal operations  — such as coupling subsurface systems to power conversion equipment. Operational challenges such as loss of connectivity between boreholes or excessive scaling can reduce output, while issues with fluid chemistry can lead to excessive corrosion or even failures. Diagnosing and repairing downhole issues that lead to reductions in pressure, temperature, or flow rate pose substantial difficulties.

Despite advances in drilling, challenges in completing geothermal wells remain, including the design and selection of subsurface equipment for maintaining well integrity and ensuring safety. For example, the elastic and polymeric sealing elements in components of wellbore packers and subsurface safety valves may not perform well at super-heated steam temperatures of approximately 660°F (350°C). The potential for corrosion of the mild steels used in typical oil and gas wells is also exacerbated at such high temperatures, requiring more expensive corrosion-resistant high-alloy steel grades. Moreover, these temperatures may lower the strength of steel casing and can induce damage due to thermal expansion after a well is drilled. 

Fragmented innovation

Compounding these factors is the speed and fragmentation of innovation. Much of today's geothermal R&D is proprietary, driven by private developers or venture-funded startups that publish little operational data. Plants often employ site-specific techniques and custom equipment. Without shared performance history or established methods to evaluate geophysical factors such as thermal drift, ground-temperature behavior, or long-term reliability, facilities may be built according to expectations that are difficult to sustain.

These inconsistencies can create ambiguity when performance falls short, making it difficult to distinguish between root causes due to design, reservoir, operational, or equipment-related issues — or the overlap between them. 

Solving geothermal obstacles: the system-level perspective 

As geothermal projects become larger and more complex, a system-level approach can help developers and operators evaluate how decisions made across reservoir management, well design, drilling, and completions, and power-generation equipment influence overall performance. Rather than assessing individual components in isolation, a system-level approach considers how subsurface conditions, process conditions, fluid chemistry, and surface facilities interact over time. 

Key system-level questions developers and operators can ask to assess — and optimize — geothermal performance can include:  

• How will topside equipment be affected by changes in the geothermal reservoir? Understanding how fluctuations in geothermal activity can affect operations and equipment is essential for long-term reliability.
• How will long-term exposure to high temperature and high flow rates affect production and injection systems? Evaluating how process conditions interact with materials and geologic formations requires a holistic perspective. For geothermal plants with steam reinjection, the high temperature can affect formation rock, leading to changes in both thermal and oil and gas reservoirs. High temperatures and flow rates can also accelerate corrosion, erosion, and fatigue of steel tubing, piping, and production and injection equipment. Quantifying these effects can help guide decisions on injection sites, process conditions, and material selection. 
• How will personnel interact with the geothermal system? Developing safe operating procedures through a comprehensive hazard analysis that identifies and quantifies how risk can evolve over the life of the system is a strong approach to help prevent human error.
• Where has operational risk been mitigated by industry standards and best practices, and where is operational liability greatest due to a lack of prior industry experience? Industry standards reduce uncertainty and can reduce liability for the parties involved in developing a geothermal plant. Documenting the design and operational areas with the greatest uncertainty can guide decisions about where to increase safety factors, conduct additional analysis, and proactively reduce technical exposure.

Taking this perspective can help project teams evaluate development tradeoffs, identify opportunities to improve reliability and efficiency, and support long-term resource management. For example, if a well or geothermal field is not meeting production targets, evaluating conditions across the reservoir, well, and surface systems may help determine whether additional drilling, redevelopment of existing assets, or rehabilitation of idle wells represent the most effective path forward. 

Because geothermal systems span geology, drilling, materials, thermal behavior, fluid chemistry, and power-generation equipment, investigations often require multiple disciplines. Stakeholders are then in a good position to assess whether performance changes are associated with thermal drawdown, reinjection strategies, equipment selection, materials degradation, reservoir behavior, or other interacting factors. Establishing a clearer understanding of cause and effect can support operational decision-making, performance assessments, insurance claims, litigation, and arbitration with well-supported technical findings.