AniGup LabsAlways-on clean power from beneath your feet
The Earth runs 24/7.
India can plug in.
Solar and wind clean the grid, but they breathe. Geothermal does not. This atlas maps every major hot-rock opportunity in India and benchmarks them against the world's producing fields, so you can see where baseload zero-carbon power could come online next.
Solar built the deck.
Geothermal pays the rent.
India is on track to install 500 GW of renewables by 2030. Almost all of it is intermittent. The grid still needs something to fill the gaps when the sun sets and the wind drops, and right now that something is mostly coal.
Geothermal runs at ~90% capacity factor: 24 hours a day, every day, in every weather. A single MW of geothermal does the work of about three MW of solar, without storage, without curtailment, without weather risk.
Every GW of geothermal added avoids roughly 6.2 million tonnes of CO2 per year vs the Indian grid average.
Sources: IEA Electricity 2024, IRENA Renewable Capacity Statistics 2024.
The seven provinces
where India keeps its heat.
The Geological Survey of India catalogues roughly 340 thermal manifestations grouped into seven provinces. Scroll through each, tap a chip, or tap any hotspot.
Himalayan Province
Stretching from Ladakh through Himachal and Uttarakhand into Sikkim, this collision-tectonics belt hosts India's hottest near-surface reservoirs. Puga and Chumathang in Ladakh are the flagship sites, with reservoir temperatures above 200 C measured in shallow boreholes.
- Surface temperatures up to 84 C at Puga
- Reservoir temp 220-260 C estimated by silica geothermometry
- 1 MW ORC pilot plant planned by ONGC + Iceland's Geothermal for Puga
Sohana / NW Indian Shield
A low-to-medium enthalpy belt running along the Aravalli front. Useful primarily for direct-use heat and binary-cycle pilots near the National Capital Region.
- Surface spring temps 40-50 C
- Granite basement, deep circulation along faults
- Best fit: binary cycle + district heat
Cambay Graben
The Cambay rift in Gujarat hosts deep, hot sedimentary aquifers already penetrated by thousands of ONGC wells. Co-produced hot brine is an unusually cheap path to first geothermal MW.
- Bottom-hole temperatures 150-175 C at 1.7-3 km
- Tuwa hot spring 98 C
- Most attractive for binary ORC retrofit on existing wells
SONATA (Son-Narmada-Tapi)
A 1500 km lineament cutting across MP and Maharashtra. Tattapani in Chhattisgarh is the most-studied Indian geothermal field, with the country's most advanced binary plant proposal.
- Tattapani reservoir 110-120 C at 380 m
- NTPC + Iceland Drilling Company MoU for 20 MW binary plant
- Salbardi and Anhoni springs >65 C
West Coast (Konkan)
A chain of warm-to-hot springs hugs the Konkan coast from Maharashtra into Karnataka. Reservoir temperatures are modest but the springs are densely clustered and close to load centers.
- 30+ thermal springs documented
- Tural, Rajwadi, Unhavare are the hottest at 60-72 C
- Best fit: direct-use, aquaculture, district cooling
Godavari Valley
Hot springs follow the Godavari graben in Telangana and AP, with subsurface temperatures inferred from coal-bed methane wells in the same basin.
- Manuguru and Pagideru springs 55-65 C
- Reservoir temp 120-140 C estimated
- Co-location with coal infrastructure aids transition
Mahanadi Valley
Atri and Tarabalo in Odisha are India's best-known eastern springs. Subsurface temperatures are moderate but proximity to grid and water makes them attractive for pilots.
- Atri spring 55 C, sulphurous
- Tarabalo cluster 48-62 C
- Reservoir temp ~110 C inferred
Geothermal is already
16 GW of proof.
India's potential is not theoretical. Iceland, Kenya, Indonesia, the Philippines, Turkey and the US have been running geothermal at grid scale for decades. The globe shows producing fields in green, pilots in amber. Click anything.
Four ways to tap a hot rock.
Each method pulls heat from the ground in a different way. Hover the tabs, watch the diagram, read it like you're 15 and curious.
Flash steam
Like a pressure cooker. Drop the pressure on super-hot water and it instantly bursts into steam, loud enough to spin a wheel.
- 1Drill a well into water hotter than 180°C, trapped under high pressure
- 2Let it shoot up. As pressure drops, it flashes into steam
- 3Steam spins a turbine, turbine spins a generator, lights come on
Engineering note. Hot brine (>180 C) flashes to steam through a turbine. Larderello, The Geysers, Olkaria, Wairakei. Needs a high-temperature liquid-dominated reservoir. In India: best fit is Puga.
- + Mature, ~99% availability
- + Lowest LCOE among geothermal
- + Single well can do 5-15 MW
- - Needs >180 C reservoir
- - Mineral scaling
- - Modest non-condensable gas emissions