Published November 2025 | Published
Journal Article Open

Single-well based control and optimization of hydraulic stimulation and induced seismicity: Application to the Otaniemi geothermal project

  • 1. ROR icon California Institute of Technology
  • 2. ROR icon French National Centre for Scientific Research
  • 3. ROR icon Virginia Tech

Abstract

In this study, we apply control theory to mitigate earthquake hazards to a stress-based model of enhanced geothermal stimulation. The model considers pore pressure diffusion as the main stressing mechanism and rate-and-state friction as the shear failure mechanism. The controller is designed to follow a given average pressure and the probability of exceedance of a red-light earthquake (the magnitude at which the stimulation would have to stop by regulation) within chosen volumes surrounding the injection source and within a target time. We rigorously prove that the proposed controller can effectively force two output types within the system to given references, despite the presence of model uncertainties, and with minimal system information, using a continuous control signal. This framework is applied to a validated model of the 2018 Otaniemi geothermal stimulation. We use a suite of simulations to identify injection scenarios that outperform the 2018 Otaniemi stimulation. The optimal stimulation achieves higher average pressure in a shorter time with lower seismic hazard. The controller can help determine whether a combination of safety thresholds and optimization targets is feasible and economical. The control framework could be used to design stimulation schedules for enhanced geothermal systems.

Copyright and License

© 2025 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Acknowledgement

The authors D.G.-O. and I.S. would like to acknowledge the European Research Council’s (ERC) support under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (Grant agreement no. 101087771 INJECT) and the Region Pays de la Loire and Nantes Métropole under the Connect Talent programme (CEEV: Controlling Extreme EVents - Blast: Blas LoAds on STructures). T.K, J-P.A and M.A acknowledge funding from the NSF/Industry-University Collaborative Research Center ‘Geomechanics and Mitigation of Geohazards’ (National Science Foundation, United States award No. 1822214). M.A. acknowledges funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation, Switzerland through Grant P2ELP2_195127. M.A and J-P.A acknowledge funding from the Resnick sustainability institute at Caltech . The authors thank Prof. Ilmo Kukkonen and the anonymous reviewer for their valuable edits and comments that significantly improved the manuscript.

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Created:
July 7, 2025
Modified:
July 7, 2025