Methodology of determining the uncertainty in the accessible geothermal resource base of identified hydrothermal convection systems

In order to quantify the uncertainty of estimates of the geothermal resource base in identified hydrothermal convection systems, a methodology is presented for combining estimates with uncertainties for temperature, area, and thickness of a geothermal reservoir into an estimate of the stored energy with uncertainty. Probability density functions for temperature, area, and thickness are assumed to be triangular in form. In order to calculate the probability distribution function for the stored energy in a single system or in many systems, a computer program for aggregating the input distribution functions using the Monte-Carlo method has been developed.

To calculate the probability distribution of stored energy in a single system, an analytical expression is also obtained that is useful for calibrating the Monte Carlo approximation. For the probability distributions of stored energy in a single and in many systems, the central limit approximation is shown to give results ranging from good to poor.