News Release

Utah FORGE chooses 17 selectees to begin negotiations

University of Utah to award $46 M for research in Enhanced Geothermal System development

Grant and Award Announcement

University of Utah

The Utah Frontier Observatory for Research in Geothermal Energy (FORGE) at the University of Utah is pleased to announce it has chosen 17 project selectee applications for negotiations for the FORGE Solicitation 2020-1. The selectees could receive a combined total of up to $46M over the next 3 years.

"There is enormous untapped potential for enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) to provide clean and reliable electricity generation throughout the United States," said Kathleen Hogan, Assistant Deputy Under Secretary for Science in the U.S. Department of Energy. "These investments in EGS research support President Biden's mission to take on the climate crisis by pushing the frontiers of science and engineering and creating jobs in cutting-edge clean energy fields."

Utah FORGE is a dedicated underground field laboratory sponsored by the U. S. Department of Energy's Geothermal Technologies Office. It is working on developing, testing, and accelerating breakthroughs in EGS. Solicitation 2020-1 was the first formal call for research proposals on EGS technologies from the Utah FORGE Program.  More information about Solicitation 2020-1 is available here.

"Utah FORGE looks forward to collaborating closely with the scientists and engineers of the project teams on technologies that will promote commercialization of this inexhaustible and non-polluting energy source," said Joseph Moore, principal investigator of the project. "We were impressed with the caliber of all of the applicants who submitted proposals and anticipate additional solicitations in the future."

The topic areas and the selectees include:

Title

Selectees

Devices suitable for sectional (zonal) isolation along both cased and open-hole wellbores under geothermal conditions

 

Welltec PetroQuip Energy Services Colorado School of Mines
Estimation of stress parameters

 

Battelle Memorial Institute Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory University of Oklahoma
Field-scale characterization of reservoir stimulation and evolution over time, including thermal, hydrological, mechanical, and chemical effects

 

Clemson University Stanford University Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Rice University
Stimulation and configuration of the well(s) at Utah FORGE
Fervo Energy Company University of Texas at Austin
 

Integrated Laboratory and Modeling studies of the interactions among thermal, hydrological, mechanical, and chemical processes

 

Pennsylvania State University Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory US Geological Survey University of Oklahoma Purdue University

 

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About Utah FORGE

The FORGE site is located near the town of Milford in Beaver County, Utah, on the western flank of the Mineral Mountains. Near term goals are aimed at perfecting drilling, stimulation, injection-production, and subsurface imaging technologies required to establish and sustain continuous fluid flow and energy transfer from an EGS reservoir. For more information, please visit our website.


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