Story: Kory Lanphear
Photos: Bailey Sadowsky & Submitted
Origional story from the April Edition of Elevate Magazine
Dan Hoyer could live anywhere.
And he has. He’s lived in California, New Zealand, and the Philippines. He’s spent time in multiple African countries. Yet, he chose Rapid City, not know for its geothermal industry, as the base of operations for his energy exporting company, DH Geothermal.
Over the years, Dan has spent a lot of time in Rapid City. He lived here in his youth and worked as a stable boy on the west side of town in an area that is now a neighborhood full of houses, but was once a horse pasture. He also acquired a bachelor’s, master’s, and a Ph. D. from South Dakota Mines. Admiration for Rapid City and respect for its people are themes Dan returns to often.
“I was an Eagle Boy Scout. We did hiking, biking and swimming in the Black Hills. And when I was in college, I was really poor, so I know the Black Elk wilderness like the back of my hand, because that’s what I did,” said Dan. “So Rapid City is just really comfortable. Got some great golf courses, good people — they got grease underneath their fingernails.”
But, how exactly does one export geothermal energy? As President of DH Geothermal, Dan, 71, serves as everything from a consultant to project manager to Chief Operating Officer for a variety of geothermal acquisition ventures both stateside and international. As such, he isn’t exporting a product, but his own knowledge.
“Yellowstone is probably the tourist trap geothermal, where you have hot springs that come out of the ground. It’s hot water that usually can be on site of a volcano or hot magma close to the Earth’s surface,” said Dan. “You drill wells that are 5,000 to 10,000 feet deep and you produce hot water 500, 600 degrees Fahrenheit. And that water comes up and you separate the steam from the water and run it through a turbine and make electricity.”
At his office inside the RESPEC building in Rapid Valley, Dan keeps large, framed photos from the various international projects he has been involved with over the years. Among other projects, Dan is helping RESPEC grow their geothermal group by contributing his overseas knowledge and expertise.
“The reason that I’ve spent so much time overseas is because I really get a kick out of figuring out how to be an effective leader,” he said. “The body language is different. The language is different. I mean, the Philippines has 14 words for ‘rice’ as an example. It’s really fun. It’s a matter of how you communicate with them. Do they trust you?”
Since many of the projects Dan works on are larger in scale, but short in duration, on aspect of his expertise is good business sense, which he augmented with an MBA from Kellogg School of
Management in Illinois.
A current project to optimize a large geothermal field in Kenya requires Dan’s fiscal smarts, scientific knowledge and full leadership capabilities. Dan traveled there last September, and will return at the end of the project, next December.
“There’s probably 10 square kilometers of 300 wells with a bunch of pipelines that connect these wells and the power plants and produce the fluids. So probably the highest value is to take the existing infrastructure and figure out how to get more power out of that system,” he explained. “The second part of that is: are there efficiency improvements to the existing plants? Can I put in new parts and pieces? Twenty years ago, how we designed the turbine was less efficient than it is today. And then the third part is: can I build some more power plants? You got all these assets, and then you are responsible for profit, loss, and capital.”
When he tells people on these farflung projects where he is from in the United States, though, they usually haven’t heard of Rapid City.
But that’s where it all comes back to for Dan:
“I’m on the edge of retirement. So I’m practicing. I don’t work Fridays. I’m thinking about not working Mondays, too. My current thought is that I will stay active. I like the idea of continuing to mentor or coach. I think about giving back to the community. It’d be fun to teach.”
Even in retirement, Dan will keep working on exporting knowledge.
