By OGJ editors
HOUSTON, May 14 -- Sec. of Energy Spencer Abraham announced a cooperative agreement to develop and demonstrate an Enhanced Geothermal System (EGS) to boost production of geothermal energy in California.
DOE will provide $4.5 million over the next 5 years to support the $12 million effort by the University of Utah's Energy & Geoscience Institute (UU-EGI) and Caithness Energy LLC of New York, NY.
This cooperative agreement will develop and demonstrate new EGS techniques to engineer and improve the productivity of Coso geothermal field, 25 miles north of Ridgecrest, Calif., on the China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station.
"Developing and demonstrating this enhanced geothermal system technology advances the president's National Energy Plan goals of deploying next generation technology and increasing renewable energy production on federal lands," Abraham said. "The new system is expected to add about 15 Mw of electrical capacity—enough to power 11,250 homes—to the 270 Mw now being generated at the site."
Frac job
UU-EGI and Caithness will pump water under high pressure into a portion of Coso field to fracture subsurface rocks and create channels for hot water to move from the geothermal reservoir to existing geothermal wells.
The Coso geothermal plant operates under agreements with the US Navy and the US Department of Interior's Bureau of Land Management, paying production royalties to the federal government.
This EGS cooperative agreement is the first award in a three-part program. DOE is seeking applications for Stage Two, which is designed to improve economically unproductive geothermal fields. During Stage Three, DOE will develop technology for finding new geothermal fields where EGS technology can be applied.
EGS is expected to more than double the amount of geothermal energy economically recoverable in the US and extend the productive life of existing geothermal fields, DOE said.
