The Department of Energy has chosen a U.S. geothermal technology company to receive funding to explore geothermal energy. The company will drill into promising underground resources in New Mexico and other parts of the country to find new sources of electricity.
As part of 21 projects that could receive up to $99 million, the DOE selected XGS Energy to drill deep beneath New Mexico. The goal is to collect geological and temperature data needed to develop commercial-scale power from hot rock.
XGS announced on Monday that it will lead the project with Baker Hughes, New Mexico Tech, and Sandia National Laboratories to drill a deep vertical appraisal well to map what is underground. The team will collect temperature readings, geological data, core samples, and continuous drilling information. This data will help refine underground models, improve future well designs, and reduce uncertainty in geothermal development.
The New Mexico project is part of a DOE initiative announced on September 21. This initiative includes five field-scale enhanced geothermal systems projects and 16 exploration-drilling projects, all eligible for up to $99 million in the first budget period. More funding will depend on congressional approval after the projects meet certain milestones and performance goals.
The selections are not final awards yet. Projects must first go through negotiations, the DOE says.
The race beneath America’s feet
Because geothermal power traditionally depends on finding the right combination of underground heat, water, and permeable rock, next-generation systems are attempting to break that geographic limitation by engineering reservoirs or using technologies that can extract heat from hot rock in places where conventional geothermal resources are difficult to develop.
Utilizing one such approach, XGS is developing a geothermal system that it says can generate electricity without consuming water, potentially opening up hot-rock resources in areas where water is scarce.
The company is already working with Baker Hughes on a planned 150-megawatt geothermal project in New Mexico, intended to deliver power to the Public Service Company of New Mexico grid to support Meta’s data-center operations in the state.
The DOE’s wider program aims to generate the kind of hard underground data that geothermal developers need before committing to much larger commercial projects.
The projects will make the data publicly available through its Geothermal Data Repository, allowing researchers, industry, and other developers to use the findings for future exploration and technology development.
Why the drilling matters
Geothermal developers know that the existence of hot rock is only the beginning. They also need to know how hot it is, where it is located, how the surrounding rock behaves, and whether wells can be drilled and operated economically.
This makes the New Mexico appraisal well important to XGS’s plans. Instead of immediately building a full-scale power plant, the project will first gather detailed subsurface evidence to help determine how future wells should be designed and constructed.
The goal is to turn what is effectively an underground geological question into a bankable engineering project. If successful, the approach could help expand geothermal power beyond the relatively limited areas where conventional geothermal resources are readily accessible.
The DOE said the 21 projects are intended to reduce technical and development risk while providing information needed to support future commercial projects and investment.
