Geothermal Performance & Costs

I understand that GETEM was used to build the SAM geothermal model.
I have concerns about using what was in GETEM and it appears that SAM fails in some basic areas, such as omitting well pumps, calculating gathering system costs, and estimating the power plant $/kW cost.
I would really like to see it work, because GETEM is a MESS.  I can help with some of these things.
Please let me know.
Gary McKay
 

Hi Gary,

There is a bug in the Geothermal model that causes the Automatically estimate the plant cost per kW option on the Installation Costs page under "Plant Capital Cost" (toward the bottom of the page) not to work. Thank you for bringing it to our attention.

We will fix this for the next update to SAM 2022.11.21. In the meantime, as a workaround, you can run this LK script to fix SAM 2022.11.21 r1:

1. Download fix-geothermal-ui.zip and extract the .lk and .json files it contains into a single folder such as the Desktop folder.
2. Start SAM, and click Open script on the Welcome page. (Do not start or open a project.)
3. Click Run at the top of the script editor window.
4. When the script finishes, close SAM, restart it and verify that the capital cost calculations work correctly.

Please let us know if you have any trouble with the workaround or discover any other issues.

Best regards,
Paul.

Thank you for making the cost calculation work.
The cost that it calculates is about 1/3 of what it should be.
How does it calculate the cost?
The algorithms from GETEM probably need to be revised.
I have much experience in this if you want some help.

Hi Gary,

My colleague will follow up with you about your offer to help.

Best regards,
Paul.