GeothermalPOWER AT WADI AL-LITH, SAUDI ARABIA

Saudi Arabia's western Arabian Shield hosts some of the Kingdom's most promising geothermal targets, yet decades of exploration left them described rather than quantified. Wadi Al-Lith, 200 km southeast of Jeddah, typifies the gap: four hot springs — Ain Al-Harrah, Bani Hilal, Wadi Markub and Al-Darakah — discharge from fractured Precambrian basement at up to 96 °C, but no study had translated the geology into power generation potential. This study delivers the first integrated assessment of the entire field.

The innovation is methodological as much as geographical: a custom Python platform that chains hydrogeochemical interpretation, classical and multicomponent geothermometry, thermodynamic fluid modeling, heat flow analysis and Monte Carlo reserve estimation into one reproducible workflow. The thermal waters prove to be mature Na-Cl fluids enriched in lithium, strontium and barium, signalling deep circulation through high heat-generating granites. Reservoir temperatures converge at 90 to 135 °C, average heat flow reaches 106.1 mW/m², and the probabilistic reserve model puts most likely power potential at 3.56 to 5.59 MWe per spring per km³ of reservoir, averaging 4.61 MWe — a bankable medium-enthalpy resource aligned with Vision 2030.