The U’s Energy & Geoscience Institute will receive a $4.5 million boost from the U.S. Department of Energy to aid their five-year, $12 million effort to boost electric power production at Coso geothermal field in California.
Located at the edge of Death Valley in southern California, the Coso geothermal field is jointly operated by the U.S. Navy and the Bureau of Land Management.
Peter Rose, the geothermal program coordinator at the institute, said that the $4.5 million grant marks a new direction for the Department of Energy.
“This grant shows that the U.S. Department of Energy is willing to explore new means of extracting energy from the earth,” Rose said.
With the money received from the U.S. Department of Energy, the institute will be conducting a new type of experiment to extract the earth’s natural heat.
“What we’re going to do is open up rocks and make new geothermal systems where none existed before,” Rose said.
Geothermal energy is categorized as a renewable energy source, along with wind, biomass and solar energy.
The energy that is produced through the Coso Geothermal Project will be used for electricity generation.
“When somebody flips on a light switch, they have no idea where the electrons that power that light are coming from, so our work is transparent to the user,” Rose said.
Another major use of geothermal energy is direct heating, which circulates waste from geothermal generation through buildings, or can be used to heat water, Rose said.
He also said that because the source for geothermal energy is the earth itself, it is a clean energy source.
“There’s no waste at all from the work we’re doing, and it’s all a domestic supply of energy,” Rose said.
The institute’s Director Raymond Levey called the $4.5 million grant “great news for the university, which has a 20-year track record in geothermal research.”