U.S. Department of Energy and Partners Test Enhanced Geothermal Systems Technologies

February 24th, 2008

Hmm. DOE is allocating a whopping $1.6 million to this project. (Sarcasm.)

The cost of that crashed B-2 boondoggle bomber represents the funding equivalent of doing the geothermal research described below 750 times over.

Oh well, as oil production declines, there will still lots of it to be sold at over $100 per barrel.

In fact, the less oil, the better; for the oil companies and their shareholders, that is.

Via: U.S. Department of Energy:

DOE has embarked on a project with a number of partners to test Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) technologies at a commercial geothermal power facility near Reno, Nevada. EGS technology enhances the permeability of underground strata, typically by injecting water into the strata at high pressure. The concept was initially developed to create geothermal reservoirs in hot underground strata where no water existed—a technology called “hot dry rock”—but has since been extended as a means of enhancing the performance of existing geothermal reservoirs. Under the DOE project, EGS technology will be tested in a well at the 11-megawatt Desert Peak facility, which is owned by Ormat Technologies, Inc. The well is currently not able to produce commercially useful quantities of hot geothermal fluid, but with the help of EGS, the site is thought to have the potential to produce 50 megawatts of power or more.

DOE, Ormat, and GeothermEx are leading the research and development project, with the participation of the University of Utah, TerraTek, Pinnacle Technologies, the U.S. Geological Survey, and three of DOE’s national laboratories: Idaho National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratory. DOE is providing $1.6 million to support the project. In addition to the current work on the sub-commercial well, the project participants are planning to use the EGS facilities at Desert Peak as a potential test site for future technology developments.

Related: MIT: Geothermal Power Could Meet World’s Annual Energy Needs 250,000 Times Over

Related: Geothermal Power in Alaska Holds Hidden Model for Clean Energy

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