Incorporating Microseismic data into Discrete Fracture Network Models in Enhanced Geothermal Systems, Utah FORGE

The Utah Frontier Observatory for Research in Geothermal Energy (FORGE) is a multi-year initiative funded by the US Department of Energy for testing targeted EGS research and development.

The authors have been supporting the FORGE project since 2017 to develop Discrete Fracture Network (DFN) models to characterize both the natural fractures present and the induced fractures created during hydraulic stimulation.

Previous DFN models of the site included hundreds to thousands of discrete fractures and relied on stochastic generation of features. This new simplified DFN model is created to provide an alternative fracture network having fewer discrete features and potentially captures the most significant flow pathways. This DFN is being used for further modelling of the long-term thermal and mechanical evolution of flow paths between these wells. The workflow for defining fractures from microseismic points is presented along with a comparison of fracture sizes and orientations between these discovered features and the fracture sets used in previous DFN models for the site.