Geothermal projects granted more money

The Great Basin Center for Geothermal Energy received a new round of funding for its second year from the U.S.

Department of Energy and has awarded it to nine research projects in the state.

The center, based at the Mackay School of Mines at the University of Nevada, Reno, received $964,000, about the same amount it got in its first year.

The money is going to fund six ongoing projects and three new projects.

One new project is working to determine the age of rocks in three northern Nevada sites - Brady's Hot Springs near Fernley, Surprise Valley in north Washoe Valley, and Buffalo Valley on the border of Lander and Pershing counties.

"Rocks that are less than million years old are more likely to have geothermal sites," said Lisa Shevenell, associate director of the Great Basin Center.

"He picked sites where there is a gap in our knowledge."

The researcher is Greg Arehart, associate professor of geological sciences.

Another new project, headed by Paul Lechler, chief geochemist, Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology, is working to measure soil gases to find rock fractures which is an indication of geothermal waters, said Shevenell.

That project is located at Desert Peak, near Brady's.

The final new project involves remote sensing technology called InSARS.

The technology is being used at Brady's and Desert Peak to study the impact of geothermal production in an effort to determine where to inject water for optimal reservoir management.

All are two-year projects, with interim results expected, said Shevenell.

In Brady's and Desert Peak, researchers are working with geothermal company Ormat Nevada Inc.

The project is funded in part by a $500,000 DOE grant Ormat received.

Scientists from Ormat, UNR, the University of Utah, various research groups and Geothermex, a Richmond, Calif., company, are working together on it, according to Dan Schochet, vice president at Sparks-based Ormat.

Schochet said the group is working on creating a so-called enhanced geothermal system, something the DOE has been working on for years.

According to Schochet, there is hot rock under the earth's surface that covers 100 percent of the globe, although the depth of it varies from place to place.

If the rock can be drilled into and fractured - the conditions in which naturallyoccurring geothermal sites are found - then water can be injected and hot water pumped out.

The trick, though, is to figure out what it would take to fracture the rock properly and with lasting effect.

"Theoretically it works," said Schochet, "but we're years away from figuring it out.

But it can be used almost anywhere in the world.

There are parallel programs in Asia and Europe and Australia."

Interest in renewable energy such as geothermal has been growing in the last couple years, since Sept.

11, 2001, said Shevenell.

The cost of it has also been coming down, said Schochet.

In the late 1980s, geothermal energy cost about 7 cents per kilowatt-hour, he said.Today, it costs about 6 cents per kilowatt-hour.

Figuring in inflation, that means the cost has been about cut in half in 15 years.

Despite that, an industry of software developers and equipment manufacturers has not sprouted up around the technology like it has around, say, the oil industry.

That's because private industry doesn't like to fund research, said Schochet.