HS ORKA HF

Their core work

HS Orka is an Icelandic geothermal energy company that operates power plants and develops deep geothermal technology. Their H2020 work focuses on pushing geothermal beyond conventional depths — drilling into hotter, deeper reservoirs to extract more energy from a single well site. They bring operational expertise from running commercial geothermal facilities, which lets them test new drilling and stimulation techniques in real industrial conditions rather than just labs. For partners, they offer something rare: a live geothermal site willing to host experimental deep-drilling campaigns.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Both H2020 projects sit tightly within a single theme — making deep, hot geothermal wells technically and economically viable — so there is no meaningful pivot visible in the data. Between 2015 and 2020 they moved from coordinating a large deployment effort (DEEPEGS) to contributing as a host operator on a narrower materials project (GeoWell). The absence of projects after 2020 in this dataset means any recent-direction claim would be speculation.

They are consolidating around one deep technical niche — making geothermal wells go deeper, hotter, and last longer — rather than branching into adjacent renewables.

How they like to work

They have shown they can lead a large EU consortium (DEEPEGS, 17 partners across 6 countries) and also step back into a participant role on a more specialized follow-on project. The split between one coordinator and one participant role signals an organization confident enough to run a multi-million-euro effort but selective about where they commit that overhead. For partners, this means they are a credible consortium lead when a project needs an industrial host site.

Through DEEPEGS and GeoWell they connected with 17 partners across 6 European countries, a network anchored in Europe's deep-geothermal research community rather than spread broadly across energy topics.

What sets them apart

HS Orka is one of very few EU-project partners that is simultaneously a commercial geothermal power producer and a willing host for experimental deep-drilling work. Most geothermal research consortia are built around universities and institutes; HS Orka brings real operating plants in Iceland's high-enthalpy volcanic setting, which is hard to replicate elsewhere in Europe. If a project needs a real site to test deep EGS or high-temperature well technology at scale, they are a short list of one or two candidates.

Highlights from their portfolio

• DEEPEGS
  A EUR 6.4M coordinator-led demonstration of deep enhanced geothermal systems — their single largest H2020 project and one of the flagship EU efforts on EGS.
• GeoWell
  A materials-and-design project for long-life high-temperature geothermal wells, complementing DEEPEGS by tackling the hardware side of operating in extreme downhole conditions.