Each marker on the terrain is a candidate energy site: a geothermal well (heat from a deep temperature gradient), a biomass facility, or a solar/wind resource point. Every site's bar height encodes its estimated potential output; color encodes its levelized cost of energy (LCOE) — the lifetime-averaged cost per megawatt-hour, the standard metric for comparing energy sources of different scales and lifetimes.
Geothermal power potential P ∝ ΔT × flow rate
LCOE = (capital + lifetime O&M costs) / (lifetime energy delivered)
Lower LCOE = more economically attractive site
- Resource type filter — shows all sites, or isolates geothermal wells, biomass sites, or solar/wind markers only.
- Regional temperature gradient — raises or lowers the geothermal heat gradient (°C/km), directly scaling geothermal sites' output and lowering their LCOE.
- Resource site density — regenerates the map with more or fewer candidate sites scattered across the terrain.
- Regenerate sites — reshuffles site positions and potentials while keeping current filter/gradient settings.
Utilities and planners run exactly this kind of geospatial LCOE ranking to decide where to site new geothermal wells or renewable installations first.