US DOE Announces $20 Million Funding Towards Novel Geothermal Technologies

The U.S. DOE (Department of Energy) has announced a $20-million funding towards demonstrating, developing and researching innovative geothermal technologies. Seven projects have been aimed for demonstrating the economic and technical feasibility of unconventional technologies under geothermal energy for three research areas which are high-pressure geothermal fluids, low temperature fluids and the geothermal fluids that are recovered from gas and oil wells.

This funding would help in demonstrating as well as commercializing new technologies for lowering high initial costs in geothermal development and in facilitating the operational usage of low-temperature geothermal plants much more economical.  Such innovative projects will contain the required potential for expanding the usage of geothermal energy towards more areas throughout the country.

Low temperature resources across the country are widely available while offering an opportunity for significantly expanding the portfolio of national geothermal energy.  However, most of the geothermal resources with low temperatures are not quite hot for harnessing through conventional geothermal processes. Geothermal coproduction along with gas and oil wells also has a considerable potential for producing electricity towards field use or for selling to the energy grid.

Source: http://www.energy.gov/index.htm