Energy Storage Solutions – Monitoring Wellbore and Reservoir Integrity Through Passive Sensing Methods

Our Speakers:

Bill Bartline
Co-Founder, Geo2Watts

Abstract:

The rapid growth of episodic and intermittent energy generation systems presents many challenges to balancing the grid, foremost among them is the requirement of pairing them with energy storage systems that can deploy electricity during times of no solar or wind generation. The storage solutions range in delivery capacities from a few hours to greater than ten hours, or even days, and have a spectrum of energy delivery capacities (MW/hour). Many of these solutions involve the use of end of life oil and gas boreholes and some incorporate the subsurface reservoirs as part of their storage solution. In many of these cases, the wells and reservoirs being used are are being subjected to strains unlike what they have experienced in the past and as such require monitoring to both provide data for optimization of the process and provide early detection of a potential compromise of the system elements. Microseismic monitoring has a long history of monitoring subsurface operations via surface and downhole instruments, especially in hydraulic fracturing demonstrating the ability of the method to provide pertinent and real or near-real time information to operators. New instrumentation measuring faint wellbore and reservoir signals based on downhole fiber optics using all three data bands, temperature, acoustic and pressure can potentially provide important feedback to these processes.