ThinkGeoEnergy – Geothermal Energy News

Grant awarded for monitoring software in EGS geothermal systems

Production of electricity using enhanced geothermal systems

The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded $150,000 as part of a small business innovation research award for a company developing monitoring software enabling EGS systems to be cost competitive and fully integrated into the electric grid.

Last week, Introspective Systems, LLC announced that the company has received a $149,935 Small Business Innovation Research award for work in support of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) project. EGS is a technology that pumps water into hot rock formations thousands of feet below the earth’s surface and uses that warmed water to drive conventional steam turbines. Introspective Systems will develop monitoring software that enables EGS systems to be cost competitive and fully integrated into the electrical grid. The project researches new algorithms and analytics methods to provide enhanced precision in the understanding of the complex Geothermal systems being developed in the future.

CEO Kay Aikin said, “We are using our deep seismological expertise obtained in our National Earthquake Information Center and the US Air Force work to develop this system that could be a gamechanger for baseload renewable systems. This effort could help future EGS systems remove 400 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per year or about 6.1% of our yearly carbon emissions in the US.”

The work is part of a larger body of research and product development aimed at studying ways to combat global warming. Current methods of power generation by fossil fuels will need to be replaced by storage technologies or other non-polluting power sources. Geothermal resources will require enhanced resource characterization, exploitation, and monitoring software.

Source: Company release

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