Geothermal developer Zanskar discovers ‘blind’ hotspot using AI

The Nevada soil covering Big Blind, a previously unknown geothermal well that developer Zanskar recently discovered, is nothing out of the ordinary.

“If you were to walk over this site yourself, there would be nothing at the surface that would clue you in that there’s anything geothermal under the ground,” Zanskar CTO Joel Edwards told Tech Brew. “If you were to walk the site with an expert geologist, they would probably tell you the same thing: There’s nothing obvious at the surface that clues somebody in that there’s geothermal underneath.”

But using AI, Zanskar found a geothermal well below the inconspicuous patch of land— which the company has aptly named Big Blind, as the ground above it doesn’t show any signs of what’s below. And this discovery is a pretty big deal, according to Zanskar: Big Blind is the first commercial blind geothermal well discovered in the last 30 years.

Edwards said Zanskar found the site “from scratch” using the company’s “prospecting toolkit,” in which regional AI models of the Earth predict where geothermal wells might be. Field teams then confirm those hypotheses.

Zanskar’s focus on discovering untouched conventional geothermal sites and drilling deeper into those considered to be spent separates it from other geothermal developers, many of which focus on human-made enhanced geothermal systems. While Zanskar looks for hydrothermal systems, or naturally occurring geothermal wells, other developers like Fervo pump water into hot spots underground and convert the water’s heat into geothermal energy.

Therefore, discovering Big Blind is a huge deal for Zanskar—and the industry—as it suggests that there are more naturally occurring geothermal resources in the US than previously detected, Edwards said. And not only that: Zanskar was able to find the geothermal well without hauling around expensive drilling equipment and creating numerous exploration holes.

“We built models that told us where to go and we are collecting much cheaper field data,” Edwards said. “So actually, the cost of finding these systems might be much lower than you thought.”

And even though conventional geothermal wells are usually much shallower than enhanced geothermal systems, Edwards said Zanskar’s plan is to drill deeper into sites like Big Blind to get even more out of them.

“Big Blind is just the first of a wave of these sites that the big rigs will be at,” Edwards said, “and they’ll be drilling and proving that these things can make power.”