ON Power and a group of 9 partners in Europe received a EUR 4 million grant from the Horizon Europe Research and Innovation programme. The British partners in the project will be funded by UK Research and Innovation fund for approx. EUR 1 million. The funding contributes to the COMPASS project. 

The COMPASS project was successfully started in a Kick of Meeting held in Reykjavik, Iceland on November 2-3rd. The project partners explored the objectives of the project thoroughly and visited the potential site. 

The COMPASS initiative has an ambition to solve current challenges concerning well integrity and corrosion resistance when drilling into hot settings, which will aid sustainable exploitation of geothermal energy. Improved well design would unlock the huge potential from super-hot resources. COMPASS will by that contribute to reducing levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) and lower footprint of geothermal projects. Moreover, being able to produce from super-hot resources will enlarge the available resources, prolong the lifetime of geothermal plants and thus, ensure access to much needed heating energy for future demands.  

COMPASS will go beyond the state of the art by providing novel well completion technologies and research-based knowledge to bridge a current knowledge gap in geothermal well construction. In addition, circular-by-design aspects of novel well design concepts with COMPASS-developed technologies will be evaluated. 

Novel well design developed and tested in COMPASS has the potential to extend the lifetime of geothermal wells far beyond their conventional economic lifetime. A steam producing well can for example be turned into a carbon mineralization storage well or thermal energy storage when steam production ends. 

COMPASS at a glance:  

• COMPASS aims to develop sustainable wells technologies for near-magmatic geothermal energy production 
• Project Coordinator: ON Power, Iceland 
• Project Office: GEORG, Iceland  
• 10 Partners: 4 industry, 3 NGOs, 2 Research Institutions  
• Partners: ON, OR, GEORG, HLC, ISOR, SINTEF, CURISTEC, COSVIG, TWI, TVS 
• 6 Countries: Iceland, France, United Kingdom, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway 
• Project duration: 3 years 
• Total Horizon Europe funding 4 €M 
• UKRI funding 1 €M 
• Funding for companies in Iceland: 2 060 875 €