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Colorado companies recieve $18M in ARRA geothermal grants

Gov. Bill Ritter congratulated four Colorado companies, three state institutions, and the Denver Museum of Nature and Science for securing $18 million in Recovery Act funding for geothermal exploration, research and demonstration projects.

Grants included $4.78 million to Flint Geothermal to use geological mapping tools to identify Colorado geothermal resources and $4.6 million to Colorado's Department of Personnel and Administration to assess the performance of ground source heat pump projects.

"These projects will further power our New Energy Economy into the future, providing important jobs and leading Colorado to more clean energy sources," Gov. Ritter said. "Geothermal energy is a vast, and still largely untapped, resource that diversifies our supplies and builds energy security for Colorado and the country."

The grants were part of $338 million in geothermal grants distributed nationwide by the Department of Energy. In all, the grants will support 123 projects in 39 states, including work conducted by private industry, academic institutions and governments. The grants will be matched more than one-for-one with an additional $353 million in private and non-federal cost-share funds.

Collectively, these projects represent a dramatic expansion of the U.S. geothermal industry and will create or save thousands of jobs in drilling, exploration, construction, and operation of geothermal power facilities and manufacturing of ground source heat pump equipment.

"The United States is blessed with vast geothermal energy resources, which hold enormous potential to heat our homes and power our economy," said Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu. "These investments in America's technological innovation will allow us to capture more of this clean, carbon free energy at a lower cost than ever before. We will create thousands of jobs, boost our economy and help jump-start the geothermal industry across the United States."

The Recovery Act grants follow investments by the Governor's Energy Office in early geothermal research and development. Those grants, using Clean Energy Fund dollars, have now helped leverage $18 million for Colorado companies and agencies.

Below is a breakdown of the Colorado grants:

Innovative Exploration and Drilling Projects

  • Flint Geothermal LLC: $4.78M -- The company will use a combination of geological mapping tools to identify resources in Colorado.
  • Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) Components Research & Development/Analysis
  • Composite Technology Development Inc. of Lafayette: $557,150 to develop and demonstrate a new class of circuit boards that can withstand high temperatures and operate reliably in EGS wells.
  • Colorado School of Mines: $1.19M to create a large-scale simulation model that can tie together all the various physical properties of an EGS system. The resulting model will be more robust and accurate than current, smaller-scale models.
  • Colorado School of Mines: $860,597 to create and validate an EGS simulation model that can tie together the fluid flow properties of an EGS system. The resulting model will be more robust and accurate than current, smaller-scale models.
  • Power Environmental and Energy Research Institute of Nathrop: $1.84M to develop a model to compare tracer fluids used to help visualize EGS reservoirs.
  • Composite Technology Development, Inc.: $954,546 to shape memory polymer composites and foams to be used to isolate particular sections of a drilled well, as part of an EGS simulation technique.
  • William Lettis & Associates Inc. of Denver (and Virginia): $708,000 to use seismic data to image the physical properties of geothermal reservoirs.

Ground Source Heat Pump Demonstration Projects

  • Colorado School of Mines: $245,797 to create a "Geothermal Academy," with a data and analysis clearinghouse for ground-source heat projects.
  • Colorado Department of Personnel and Administration: $4.6M to collect and analyze data to assess the performance of ground-source heat pump systems.
  • Colorado Northwestern Community College: $430,000 to retrofit a number of campus buildings to provide heating and cooling capacity.
  • Denver Museum of Nature and Science: $2.61M to demonstrate the use of municipal wastewater as the heat exchange medium for a heating/cooling system.