THE GEOTHERMAL MODELLING GROUP

The Geothermal Modelling Group works with organisations globally to optimise the use of geothermal resources

ORUA’s partner research group, the Geothermal Modelling Group (GMG), works with organisations around the world, including: Contact Energy; Newcrest Mining Ltd; Ormat (USA)); the Energy Development Corporation; and Star Energy; providing geothermal modelling services, geothermal modelling software and training in geothermal modelling. GMG helps these organisations optimise production planning for geothermal resources, maintain compliance with government regulations, and plan for the future.

GMG provide a complete geothermal modelling service for Contact Energy and Newcrest Mining on a continuing and long term basis. However, GMG have also developed initial models for Ormat that were then handed over to company reservoir engineers for use in project planning and management. GMG has a long history of improving the industry standard geothermal simulator, TOUGH2, and have worked with Seequent to link TOUGH2 with the Leapfrog geological modelling software. GMG provide a variety of visualisation and modelling tools and their latest offering is an open-source, highly parallelised simulator called Waiwera.

GMG and the Geothermal Institute (NZ) offer 1-2 week short-courses on geothermal reservoir modelling that run regularly in New Zealand and have also been run internationally (China, Iceland, Indonesia, Kenya, Philippines).