Bentley’s Seequent amps “rock to revenue” value prop, acquires geothermal simulation solution

Bentley Systems’ Seequent is very cool. And it just got cooler by acquiring Flow State Solutions, maker of the geothermal reservoir simulation solution, Volsung. Recall that Seequent Seequent makes solutions for geological and geophysical modeling, geotechnical stability, and cloud services for geodata management, visibility, and collaboration — and now, geothermal reservoirs.

According to Flow State Solutions, Volsung includes “an extremely fast reservoir simulator (Sigurd), a 3D GUI for building models, visualising model outputs and running forecast scenarios (Brynhild), a wellbore simulator (Gudrun), a pipeline simulator (Sigrun), a numerical pressure transient analysis tool (Swanhild), a thermodynamic table tool (Signy), inverse modelling tools for automatic model calibration and uncertainty analysis (Atli & Gunnar).” FWIW, Sigurd, Brynhild, Gudrun, etc., are characters in Norse mythology. Someone at Flow State has a fascination for these myths … and a very creative product naming strategy.

Anyway, as the world searches for alternative energy sources, geothermal is getting another look-see in a lot of places. Geothermal energy, according to the International Energy Agency, is produced by the “slow decay of radioactive particles in the earth’s core, a process that happens in all rocks … Rocks and water absorb heat from magma deep underground. The rocks and water found deeper underground have the highest temperatures.” The resulting energy can be used directly in heating systems and geothermal power plants.

Graham Grant, CEO of Seequent, said that Volsung gives geothermal project participants a better understanding of the underlying resources — and that combining this with Seequent’s existing Leapfrog Energy subsurface models lets developers build a comprehensive picture of this asset and better predict its performance. Mr. Grant calls this going from “rocks to revenue.”

It’s a done deal, and most of the Flow State Solutions team has joined Seequent, including co-founder Jonathon Clearwater. No financial terms were announced.

We’ll see what more the Bentley team says about this tomorrow at the various Year in Infrastructure keynotes. I’ll update if there’s more to know.

Note: The title image is from Flow State Solutions, of the Krafla Geothermal Power Station in Iceland.