‘Zonal Isolation, Drilling and Exploitation of EGS Projects’, or ZoDrEx for short, is an international project in which Geo-Energie Suisse AG is participating as an industrial partner. The project is subsidised by the European GEOTHERMICA programme.

All activities within ZoDrEx aim to select existing technologies, develop them, test them, and implement them in order to put them to the test in the context of geothermal energy projects. Given that some of these technologies are first tested in rock laboratories, ZoDrEx allows for more precise control of experimental conditions, a low-risk environment for testing new technologies and lower costs compared to testing in deep boreholes. At the end of the project period, we will be in a better position to understand how to optimise drilling, the realisation of enhanced systems (EGS), subsequent production and the operation of the installations with the aim of reducing technical and financial risk.

The ZoDrEx project includes, in addition to Geo-Energie Suisse, 9 other partners from Denmark, France, Germany, Spain and Switzerland. Five of them are industry leaders in the fields of drilling, drilling fluid services, completion equipment, project management and geothermal energy. Three of them represent engineering organisations active in both the public and private sectors, and finally two partners are renowned academic research institutes.

The project began in June 2018 with a kick-off meeting in Zurich.