Techno-economic assessment for heating cattle feed water with low-temperature geothermal energy: A case study from central Alberta, Canada

Abstract

There are over 450,000 registered oil and gas wells in the province of Alberta, Canada. A recent increase of the number of inactive wells creates significant environmental risk and financial liability in cleanup costs. By retrofitting wells for direct use geothermal heat energy production, these wells can produce clean, renewable energy and offset these risks and liabilities. This research is the first to create a model of well retrofit costs and power/benefits and to consider direct use of heat energy for ranching applications in Canada. We estimate the average cost to retrofit a suspended well to be $50,000 less than an identical abandoned well. The cost of retrofitting suspended wells varies little (<$11,000). The greatest variance in cost (>$120,000/well) is related to the distance between the well and user and resulting pipe/materials necessary to transport the hot water. Our model of well retrofit costs can be expanded to other geothermal re-purposing projects in North America and worldwide.