Media Type: Article

Fusion energy is having a moment — and a longstanding, fusion-focused institute at The University of Texas at Austin stands ready to meet that moment head-on.

This article from the SPE Methane Technical Section features Arvind Ravikumar of the University of Texas at Austin and focuses on how the Energy Emissions Modeling and Data Lab is integrating satellite observations, facility-level measurements, operational data, and emissions inventories into more credible methane accounting for oil and gas systems.

Ideal conditions for geothermal power can create some of the biggest cementing challenges for wells. Where traditional cementing methods fail, tailored cement formulations and processes can help run casing deeper and lower geothermal well costs.

Forty-degrees Celsius and 80-percent humidity. That’s how Jurassic Park must have felt, in my opinion – or, in other words, just like home in Houston in summertime.

Written by Benjamin Zastrow, PhD Candidate in Aerospace Engineering and Kay Bailey Hutchison Computational Energy Fellow

I recently had the opportunity to present research titled “Accelerating Wind Farm Uncertainty Quantification with Multifidelity Monte Carlo” at two conferences: NAWEA, North American Wind Energy Academy/WindTech at Portland State University and MATHIAS Days, organized by TotalEnergies in Paris.

Across both events, it was clear that computational science is helping engineers address the unique challenges of each energy source while providing shared tools for problems like uncertainty quantification that appear across the industry.

At WindTech, discussions included assessments of wind droughts in Texas and how wind resource uncertainties affect estimates of wind farm annual energy production. Similar topics came up at MATHIAS Days in presentations about quantifying uncertainty in 24-hour wind power forecasts using machine learning, history-matching of oil fields with Markov chain Monte Carlo, and stochastic optimization for fuel supply management. These varied applications demonstrate how methods developed in one area can often be adapted to solve new problems across disciplines.

Thank you to my advisors at The University of Texas at Austin, Karen Willcox and Anirban Chaudhuri, and to our collaborators at TotalEnergies, Rami Nammour, Wenchao YU, and Florian Euzenat, for your many ideas and suggestions. Thanks also to TotalEnergies, the Kay Bailey Hutchison Energy Center, and the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences for providing the resources to make this kind of conference travel and collaboration possible for early-career researchers like me.

GTI Energy recently had the pleasure of hosting Dr. Michael Webber for a guest lecture on the role of innovation in the transitions of energy systems over the course of modern human history. This post is inspired by the conversations that took place.

KBH Energy Center Lecturer Jonathan Rotzien writes for the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG).

KBH Energy Center Lecturer Jonathan Rotzien writes for the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG).