Geothermal. It’s becoming a — ahem — hot commodity here in Oregon. Some of that activity is happening in Central Oregon at the Newberry Volcano. But that’s not the only kind of Oregon geothermal activity. The challenge is that it’s just a bit harder to get to than the high desert. Because it’s under the ocean.
But that didn’t stop Endurance Energy from — oh man — diving in and drilling a well 16 meters deep into the seafloor near Axial Seamount (the region’s largest and most active volcano) roughly 300 miles off the Oregon coast and about a mile down. But it’s worth it. Because they’re targeting hydrothermal fluid nearing the 500°F range.
The project takes an elaborate approach to tapping geothermal energy that’s far more accessible elsewhere. Nearly every other geothermal company is operating on dry land while Endurance is adding a host of engineering challenges by doing it in deep water. But the company is betting that the approach will prove valuable for small islands needing an alternative source of energy as they try to wean off expensive, imported diesel.
I mentioned Endurance in August, when this was still a plan. Their generator, Adélie, is a 100-kilowatt unit named for the penguin. And this run is about learning and testing more so than power. A fraction of its output runs sensors. The rest goes into the water as heat. Readings return in real time over the NSF Ocean Observatories Initiative fiber already lining the floor between Axial Seamount and the Oregon coast, which CEO Andrew Redd says was part of the reason Endurance chose the site.
This kind of generator has not been hooked up to a well on the seafloor before, and the Oregon project “really serves as a learning pilot for us,” he says. Subsea geothermal is “a slightly dingbat idea, at least for grid generation,” but it has potential in certain use cases such as generating power for islands, says Roland Horne, director of Stanford’s geothermal program.
Endurance aims to run at Axial Seamount for a year, then put a 2 megawatt unit off Tonga by the end of 2027.
For more, see “Offshore Geothermal Energy Pilot Taps Seafloor Heat.”
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[…] Endurance Energy just drilled a well into the seafloor at Axial Seamount, roughly 300 miles off the coast and about a mile down, going after hydrothermal fluid at 482°F. Their generator is named after a penguin. The readings come back over NSF research fiber already lying on the ocean floor between the seamount and the Oregon shore, which is part of why they picked the spot. Stanford’s geothermal director called the whole thing “a slightly dingbat idea, at least for grid generation.” He also said it has real potential for islands. Both of those are probably true. […]