Geothermal Development Associates
P.O. Box 50939 , Sparks, Nevada, United States

Our name says it all. We offer a wide range of services to our customers interested in the development of their geothermal resources. We provide front-end feasibility studies, economic analyses, mechanical and electrical engineering, geothermal power plant equipment, and a full range of resource-related technical support. Our marketplace is the world. We have been involved in projects from the United States to East Africa, Southeast Asia, and Central and South America.  Our thirty-seven years of experience includes resource development, state-of-the-art exploration, evaluation, drilling and testing. We use innovative approaches to provide top quality packaged turbine generator sets and associated equipment in record time. We provide our customers with technical supervision during plant construction, start-up and commissioning.  Although we are a small company, our staff is experienced and dedicated to providing each customer with a high quality product, whether it is a technical report or a turbine generator set.

Geothermal Exploration and Development

You can’t put a geothermal power plant just anywhere…  Geothermal exploration encompasses a spectrum that starts with “grass roots” identification of prospective geothermal sites, and ends with the drilling of the first successful production well. The objective of an assessment program is to determine the location of the highest enthalpy fluids at their shallowest depth, with adequate permeability to achieve commercially viable production for power generation or direct use.  A well-managed exploration program typically involves several stages, with each successive stage involving greater expenditure while effectively utilizing the data acquired from previous stages. In this way, early-stage exploration risk is mitigated and exploration funding is best directed to the most favorable sites. A typical (simplified) exploration program might consist of the following:

• Phase 1 – Desktop exploration: acquire and compile existing data, and perform a preliminary resource assessment using GIS
• Phase 2 – Early stage exploration: site assessments, geologic mapping, spring and well fluid sampling and analysis, shallow temperature and Geoprobe surveys
• Phase 3 – Intermediate stage exploration: conventional temperature gradient drilling and geophysical survey(s), such as close-spaced gravity and magnetotelluric.
• Phase 4 – Drilling and testing of deeper exploration (discovery) and confirmation wells, together with reservoir analysis

POWER PLANT SUPPLIER

From the mid-1980s and throughout the 1990s, GDA provided the principal engineering services to Geothermal Power Company, Elmira, New York, for its supply of unused US military marine turbines for geothermal power generation in Indonesia, Philippines, as well as Nevada and Utah in the United States.  Since 2002, GDA has assumed sole responsibility for providing whole geothermal power plants internationally, varying in size from 2 MW to 50 MW.  Additionally, GDA custom designs control systems to accompany GDA-supplied turbine generator (TG) sets for monitoring not only the TG sets and their auxiliary equipment but the balance of plant equipment as well.