Algae fuel

Thin, flexible batteries

Wireless mesh smart grid

Crowdfunding solar

Next-gen geothermal power

Biomimicry LEDs

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Cleantech and investment in 2013
• Flash analysis: lessons from Solyndra’s fall
• Locating data centers in an energy-constrained world

AltaRock Energy — which has backing from venture capitalists, as well as Google and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s investment firm — has been working on enhanced (sometimes called engineered) geothermal tech. This technology drills wells deep into the ground, injects them with cold water to fracture the hot rocks, and creates a geothermal source of power where none was naturally occurring. Traditional geothermal systems, in contrast, tap into naturally occurring geothermal reservoirs (you know, the kind you see on the side of the road in Yellowstone National Park).

The promise of next-gen geothermal power

Geothermal power has massive potential in many areas of the U.S. but it has long remained a niche technology. A study that came out a few years ago from MIT found that enhanced geothermal system technology could create 100 GW of electricity by 2050 if the technology got reasonable investment in R&D — 100 GW is equivalent to the power produced by 100 large coal power plants. But given that traditional geothermal systems are the only ones in use, geothermal power sources have been stuck in isolated areas that have geothermal activity.

Geothermal power is also the holy grail of clean power because it’s not intermittent like solar or wind power. Geothermal power can produce electricity 24/7 — including at night — while wind power drops off when it isn’t windy, and solar power ends when the sun goes down. Constant power like this is called baseload power, and it’s one of the reasons why coal and natural gas are so widely-used.

AltaRock Energy said that it has reached a milestone at its demonstration site in Bend, Oregon, which it believes is a good sign that it’ll be able to commercialize its enhanced geothermal tech. AltaRock CEO and founder Susan Petty told me that the company has been able to create multiple, stimulated geothermal areas, from a single drilled well. “This has never been done before,” said Petty, who has been involved with geothermal stimulation since the 1970s.

Creating multiple geothermal zones from one well is important, because it means more geothermal power can be produced and the process becomes a lot cheaper in the long run. Enhanced geothermal systems in the past have created a single stimulated zone, but none — until now — have created multiple zones. While traditional geothermal can be cheaper than coal power, enhanced geothermal systems are generally more expensive than traditional ones. But being able to create multiple geothermal zones from one well brings down the overall cost of enhanced geothermal by 50 percent, Petty said.

The site in Bend was an area where geothermal developer Davenport Newberry had already drilled a well and the site had no stimulated geothermal area before AltaRock installed its technology. Davenport Newberry gave AltaRock access to the well and agreed to share data with the startup. The Department of Energy also gave AltaRock a $21.4 million grant to work on the project. Petty said the well was the equivalent of “a blank slate.”

So what next?

AltaRock is still in the testing and research phase. Now that it’s stimulated multiple geothermal zones at the site, it still needs to run injection tests and test the heat exchange areas. It also needs to drill a production well in the stimulated zones, which could happen by the end of this year or early 2014. Enhanced geothermal sites need at least two wells, one for injecting and one for producing the power.

After this testing phase, and if everything is on track, AltaRock plans to build a demonstration sized power plant on the site, and eventually a utility-scale power plant there, too. Larger plants need more permitting, and more money. So this could take many more years. Petty said the company is now looking to raise project financing from strategic partners that are interested in seeing this brand new next-gen tech commercialized.

AltaRock has already raised $26 million from Google, Kleiner Perkins, Khosla Ventures and Vulcan Capital, the investing arm of Vulcan, which was founded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. But VCs probably won’t want to back this kind of capital intensive project, particularly now that greentech investing has gone out of vogue in the Valley.

Despite the breakthrough, AltaRock still faces hurdles. The company was originally working on a demonstration project in Northern California back when it was founded in 2007 when technical problems with drilling through hard rocks prompted the company to give up that project in 2009.

That California project also faced protests from residents living nearby who were worried about seismic activity created by the drilling. Rock fracturing creates disturbances deep inside the Earth, and some critics say the technique could create earthquakes powerful enough to threaten the safety of nearby residents. Such concern shut down an enhanced geothermal project in Switzerland.

But Petty said that at its project in Bend it created a dialogue with residents and protestors in the community, and the company did constant testing and monitoring of the system throughout the stimulation work. The seismic activity was so small as to be virtually undetected by nearby residents — snow falling and trains running through the area had higher seismic activity than the geothermal site, said Petty.

These type of new geothermal projects also generally take a lot longer than expected to build. Just getting permits for this initial phase of the Bend project took AltaRock two and a half years, when Petty said she expected it to happen in closer to one year. But if there’s anything we’ve learned from the cleantech boom and bust of the last six years, it’s that clean power innovation takes time.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Green IT Overview, Q2 2010
• The fourth quarter of 2012 in cleantech
• Cleantech and investment in 2013

The Bureau of Land Management said earlier this month that it found no big environmental impact for the project, which is set to take place near Newberry Volcano in the Deschutes National Forest in central Oregon. The decision allows Seattle-based AltaRock to start the 2-year project of engineering an underground reservoir to create the hot water and steam needed to produce electricity.

BLM’s decision is crucial for the company to test its technology of creating “engineered geothermal systems” or “enhanced geothermal systems” and eventually design a geothermal power plant.  The idea is to create geothermal reservoirs in areas without naturally occurring steam fields. If successful, this technology could greatly boost geothermal power generation, which is a cleaner source of electricity than fossil fuel-based power and it can be produced around the clock. Making it work has proven a tough challenge, however.

AltaRock garnered a lot of attention when Google decided in 2008 to put money into the startup and cited a 2007 MIT report showing the vast potential of generating cleaner energy in the country with the type of technology AltaRock was developing. The startup, founded in 2007, was working on a demonstration project in California when technical problems with drilling through hard rocks prompted the company to give up that project in 2009. By then, AltaRock had raised some $26 million not only from Google but also from investors such as Kleiner Perkins, Khosla Ventures and Vulcan Capital.

The startup then looked to Oregon for a demonstration site and filed an application in May 2010.

The key to creating a geothermal reservoir is to drill a well deep into the earth and inject cold water to fracture the hot rocks. To produce electricity, a pump sends the water into the well, where it flows along fissures of the hot rocks and extends them. In the process, the water soaks up the heat. More wells are needed to reach down to the fractured hot rocks to retrieve the heated water and harvest the steam to run the turbines above ground.

The technology is more difficult to carry out than it sounds. The company needs special tools to break through tough rocks to drill wells that are few miles deep. It also needs to calibrate the right amount of water pressure to create a desired system of fractured rocks. Figuring out where to drill the production wells – to pull up the heated water – can be tricky. The company will have to predict the paths of the expanding fissures to make sure the production wells intercept them. Drilling a well typically costs a few million dollars.

Rock fracturing creates disturbances deep inside the Earth, and some critics say the technique could create earthquakes powerful enough to threaten the safety of nearby residents. That concern shut down a project in Switzerland. AltaRock faced similar protests from residents living near its original project site at The Geysers in Northern California.

For the demonstration project in Oregon, AltaRock will use an existing geothermal well of about 10,060 feet deep for injecting water and two new wells for pumping out the hot water (here is a fact sheet about the project).  The company has gotten a $21.4 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy for the project.

The company will install a bunch of seismic sensors at the project site to monitor earthquake activities. BLM said the demonstration project shouldn’t create major earthquakes. AltaRock mainly wants to figure out the best way to engineer the reservoir, and the project won’t actually produce electricity.

The MIT study said enhanced geothermal system technology could create 100 GW of electricity by 2050 if the technology gets “reasonable investment in R&D.” Geothermal energy is sometimes seen as a better alternative to wind and solar for clean power generation because it could produce energy around the clock. But it’s so expensive to develop that making a good profit from it is hard. As a result, geothermal energy development seems to be on a slow march while solar and wind are taking off.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Green IT Overview, Q2 2010
• The fourth quarter of 2012 in cleantech
• Cleantech and investment in 2013

As Dan Reicher, the executive director at the Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance at Stanford University, told the gathered audience, tens of trillions of dollars are going to be spent on energy infrastructure in the next few decades, and we need to have strong policy and finance to support a sustainable-energy future. He went on to say that startups need help bridging the technology valley of death, the gap between having a functional demo and being operational on a commercial scale, which sometimes takes decades to close.

Before announcing the grand prize, Jim Davis, the president of Chevron Energy Solutions, took a hopeful view and suggested that some of the event’s competitors were working on technologies that might have “the power to change the world.” And that although “developing these technologies to commercial scale remains a challenge, our collective challenge is to create solutions” that will meet the growing energy needs of the future — a future that in Davis’ projection includes 8.5 billion people who consume 40 percent more energy than we do today.

Here’s hoping that these entrepreneurs are on the right track.

Grand prize finalists (and category winners):

Air-water-waste: PK Clean, which converts landfill plastics into hydrocarbon fuels through a catalytic depolymerization process.

Energy efficiency: Indow Windows, which manufactures thermal window inserts that press into place on the inside of a window frame to deliver double-pane window performance at a fraction of the price. The startup also took home the sustainability award.

Green building: Whole Trees Structures, which manufactures structural building systems made from round timber, the waste product of sustainably managed forests.

Smart power: GridMobility, whose Color of the Electron™ signal technology enables business, industry and consumers to choose electricity sources based on their personal preferences.

Regional winners

Overall winners for each of the six competing regions — California, Northeast, North Central, Pacific Northwest, Rocky Mountain and South Central—were also named.

California: b2u Solar, which makes solar heat systems.

Northeast: Arctic Sand, which manufactures power converter chips designed to reduce the amount of electricity used by data centers.

North Central: FortEco Lightweight Structures, which creates lightweight composite framing systems utilizing light gauge steel, insulation decking and concrete.

Pacific Northwest: Indow Windows, which makes window inserts that turn windows into efficient double-pane windows for cheap.

Rocky Mountain: Veritek Coal Processing, which uses a technology process to extract mercury, sulfur, heavy metals and other impurities from precombustion coal.

South Central: cycleWood Solutions, which makes biodegradable and compostable thermoplastic that can be used in a variety of commercial plastics, including cups, plates and bags.

Global ideas prize finalists

Biofiltro (winner), Chile, waste water treatment.

Biométhodes, France, “integrated biotechnology, renewable chemistry, and energy.”

Black Silicon Solar, Denmark, nanotechnology to increase the absorption of light in silicon solar cells.

Cambridge Nanotherm, UK thermal management for LED lighting systems.

ReformTech, Sweden, “strives to professionalize the catalytic heater and mobile/stationary hydrogen reformation market through best practice development and collaborative business system.”

Resolute Marine Energy, U.S., wave-driven power solutions.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Green IT Q1: Cleantech Breaking Out — and Bracing for Hard Times
• The fourth quarter of 2012 in cleantech
• Cleantech and investment in 2013

Venturini said that the first poles that will hold photovoltaic solar panels were installed yesterday, and that the project — to be built at Enel Green Power North America’s Stillwater Geothermal Plant in Churchill County, Nev. — will take about a year to build. Eventually, the site will have 7,000 poles to support solar panels, and 81,000 panels, which Venturini said would be produced by a Chinese supplier. The project is supposed to employee 150 Nevadans.

The idea behind combining solar and geothermal is that geothermal is a so-called baseload power source, so it can provide electricity 24/7. In contrast, solar and wind can only provide power when the sun shines and the wind blows. Variable clean power sources like solar and wind need to be combined with a baseload power source (like natural gas or geothermal) to be able to reliably supply power to communities.

The electricity from the hybrid plant will be sold to local utility NV Energy. Venturini said he thinks this type of hybrid plant will prove popular and will be built across the U.S.

The National Clean Energy Summit, which kicked off on Tuesday, is in its fourth year and is led by Senator Harry Reid. As Reid said in his opening remarks, a lot has changed over the four years that the summit has been running. The funding from the stimulus package is coming to an end, and at the same time, the DOE is facing potential budget cuts. We’ll bring you more on how Chu and the industry will fight for subsidies and if not successful, how the industry will survive without them.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• The next generation of battery technology
• Green IT Overview, Q2 2010
• The fourth quarter of 2012 in cleantech

The loan guarantee will help Ormat Technologies, a public company that develops geothermal energy projects internationally, secure a loan from a private lender to build three geothermal power plants totaling 121 MW. John Hancock Life Insurance, rather than Ormat, applied for the loan guarantee under the Financial Institution Partnership Program (FIPP) overseen by the DOE and John Hancock will provide the loan that will be backed partly by the federal government. UPDATE: an updated list of DOE’s loan guarantee projects says the government is offering an $280 million loan guarantee for the Ormat project.

FIPP is one way for renewable energy developers to secure loans for massive power plant projects. The government guarantees up to 80 percent of a loan – that means it will have to pay back the bulk of the loan if the borrower can’t. FIPP is part of a larger loan guarantee program that materialized in the stimulus package passed in 2009 and supports the use of more mature technologies. For newer technologies, such as the ones used by Abengoa Solar and Cogentrix, the government issues both the guarantees and the loans, which come from the Federal Financing Bank.

Geothermal energy, unlike wind or solar, can be generated around the clock. That makes geothermal a more ideal replacement for fossil fuel plants. Tapping the hot steam reservoirs deep inside the Earth to produce electricity is a century-old practice.

Steam reservoirs aren’t available anywhere, however. Companies and research institutions have been looking for alternative ways to expand geothermal energy production, and one of the promising methods, called engineered geothermal systems (EGS), is to create artificial steam reservoirs by digging deep wells and injecting water at a high pressure to fracture the hot rocks. Separate wells will be drilled to retrieve the now-heated water back above ground to run steam turbines.

A 2007 MIT study hailed EGS as a promising way to generate a potential 100 GW of electricity by 2050 if the technology gets “reasonable investment in R&D.” Google cited the study when it invested in AltaRock Energy in 2008. But creating engineered reservoirs and pulling up the hot water is quite difficult. Concerns that EGS technology can cause earthquakes and disturb the peace of nearby residents have plagued some pilot projects.

AltaRock ran into technical problems drilling wells at a demonstration project site in Northern California in 2009 and has since moved the project to Oregon. The company has proposed to install sensors to look for any earthquakes during water injection activities.

Meanwhile, other companies are exploring other new ways to use geothermal power. GTherm is working on ways to boost heat – rather than hot water — generation in an underground system. It’s system is designed to send a heat transfer fluid down to a well to soak up the heat before being pumped back up to run an electricity generator. The company is still in the early stage of developing the technology.

The DOE has funded two other geothermal power plant projects before announcing the loan guarantee offering to John Hancock for the Ormat project. One of them, a partial guarantee of a $78.8 million loan to be provided also by John Hancock, supports a 36 MW project in Nevada by the Nevada Geothermal Power.

Photo courtesy of Martin_VMorris.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Green IT Overview, Q2 2010
• The fourth quarter of 2012 in cleantech
• Cleantech and investment in 2013

But now the company has found a new test site. It’s in central Oregon, on a government land leased by Davenport Newberry Holdings, which already created a geothermal well pad in the area back in 2008. The federal Bureau of Land Management, which is charged with reviewing the proposed project, is holding a public tour of the project site today. The agency is gathering public comments on the proposal; deadline for submitting them is Nov. 22.

AltaRock, based in Sausalito, Calif., is an interesting company to watch because it’s a believer in so-called “engineered geothermal systems” or “enhanced geothermal systems.” The idea is create geothermal reservoirs in areas without naturally occurring steam fields.

The key is to drill a well deep into the earth and inject cold water at a high pressure to fracture the hot rocks. To produce electricity, a pump sends the water into the well, where it flows along fissures of the hot rocks and extends them. In the process, the water soaks up the heat. More wells are needed to reach down to the bed of fractured hot rocks to retrieve the heated water and harvest the steam to run the turbines above ground.

EGS technology is more difficult than it sounds. The company needs special tools to break through tough rocks to drill wells of a few miles deep. It also needs to calibrate the right amount of water pressure to create a desired system of fractured rocks. Figuring out where to drill the production wells – to pull up the heated water – can be tricky. The company will have to predict the paths of the expanding fissures to make sure the production wells intercept them. Drilling a well typically costs a few million dollars.

Rock fracturing creates disturbances deep inside the Earth, and some critics say the technique could create earthquakes powerful enough to threaten the safety of nearby residents. That concern shut down an EGS project in Switzerland. AltaRock faced similar protests from residents living near its original project site at The Geysers in Northern California.

If done successfully, EGS has the potential to greatly expand the country’s geothermal energy production, which offers greener electricity than fossil-fueled power plants. Unlike a solar or wind farm, a geothermal power plant can produce electricity around the clock (called base load), making it a more ideal replacement of fossil-fueled power plants.

AltaRock has attracted some of the best known investors in Silicon Valley: Google, Kleiner Perkins and Khosla Ventures. The startup announced a second-round funding of $26.25 million in August 2008. Since then, the company, along with its partner Davenport Newberry, has snagged a federal grant of $21.45 million for the test project in Oregon. The companies said they would put up an additional $22.36 million to finance the project.

The project, to take place at the Deschutes National Forest, involves injecting groundwater into an existing geothermal well that is nearly 2 miles deep. The injection should create a network of fractured rocks that will then heat up water during subsequent injections. AltaRock has proposed to drill two production wells to extract the hot water (here is a FAQ sheet about the project).

The company plans to install sensors surrounding the well pad to monitor seismic activities during injections. The sensors will be located in boreholes of up to 1,500 feet deep. Overall, the project would cover 2 acres.

AltaRock mainly wants to figure out the best ways to engineer a geothermal reservoir and steam extraction. The data it collects from this project would be used to design a geothermal field with power generation capability. The company will have to hire a consultant to prepare a seismic report to identify the likelihood that the project would cause earthquakes and what AltaRock can do to minimize the shakes.

For more research, check out GigaOM Pro (subscription required):

• Report: Cleantech’s Third Quarter Growing Pains
• The Real Reason Google Is Buying Wind Power
• An Assessment of the Lighting Controls Market

Photo courtesy of Martin_VMorris

The study from Southern Methodist University used data from thousands of oil, gas and water wells to update the sparse geothermal maps that previously existed for West Virginia. The new information has bumped up the state’s previous geothermal resource estimates by 75 percent, researchers say, making it potentially the largest single site for geothermal power east of the Mississippi. Researchers intend to present the results at the 2010 Geothermal Resources Council annual meeting in Sacramento, Calif. later this month.

Google hasn’t made clear just what it intends to do with this newfound geothermal resource. But Google’s philanthropic arm, Google.org, has invested more than $45 million in clean energy technologies, including advanced wind, solar thermal and enhanced geothermal systems. It’s working on several geothermal research projects with the Department of Energy (see here and here for examples), as well as a partnership with General Electric to research technology to capture energy from hot underground rock, as compared to today’s geothermal plants which rely on existing underground hot water reservoirs.

This “hot rock” technology could vastly expand the scope of geothermal power in the U.S. and around the world. Google.org has invested in AltaRock, a startup developing the technology though a flagship project in Northern California, but that project had to be suspended earlier this year after drilling gear snagged on underground rock formations.

Geothermal, unlike other renewable energy resources, can be easily used for 24/7 baseload power — that is, it doesn’t sag and surge with the sun and the wind, which is a problem with solar panels and wind turbines. Geothermal projects are on the rise, although venture capital and private equity investors haven’t yet shown much interest in the capital-intensive sector. Companies tackling geothermal power range from the startup Vancouver-based Magma Energy, which went public last year, to geothermal giants like Ormat Technologies.

Google also has an internal solar technology project, as well as an energy-trading subsidiary, Google Energy, which bought 114 MW of wind energy via a wind farm in Iowa owned by NextEra Energy Resources. Google is likely shopping for more clean power to provide its data centers’ vast energy needs and help it with its pledge to go carbon-neutral — could geothermal help with that?

For more research on Google’s energy initiatives check out GigaOM Pro (subscription required):

• The Real Reason Google Is Buying Wind Power
• Why Google Android’s Electric Vehicle Deal with GM Matters
• Google’s Latest White Space Push: The Smart Grid

Image courtesy of Martin_vmorris.

This latest award comes a little more than a year after the DOE announced the first conditional award — $535 million for solar startup Solyndra — through a program created under the Energy Policy Act of 2005. Startup BrightSource Energy scored a conditional commitment for a whopping $1.37 billion guarantee in February for its Ivanpah solar thermal project.

U.S. Geothermal’s project is set to deploy a technology called “supercritical binary geothermal cycle,” which the DOE says offers a more efficient method for extracting thermal energy from hot water found deep below the Earth’s surface, compared to typical binary geothermal power projects. “As a result,” the DOE explained Thursday, “more energy can be extracted from existing sites in addition to new sites that previously would not have been considered for geothermal projects.”

U.S. Geothermal expects the project to create 150 jobs during 20 months that Houston, Tex.-based TAS Energy set to build the plant, and 10 jobs for full-time skilled workers when it comes online in 2012. The bulk of parts and infrastructure for the plant — as much as 95 percent — will be built stateside by U.S.-based manufacturers, according to U.S. Geothermal.

A loan guarantee essentially serves as promise by the government to back a loan if the company can’t make good on it. It offers a real competitive edge for these companies because it will typically enable them to finance projects with a better interest rate and at a lower cost than would otherwise be available to them.

Geothermal companies in particular are working in a market where Uncle Sam is one of few games in town for project financing. The Geothermal Energy Association reported recently that U.S. geothermal power projects grew 46 percent in 2009, up from about 30 percent in 2008. But while the stimulus package included $400 million for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Geothermal Technologies Program, venture capitalists and private equity investors are still largely keeping this technology at an arms length.

This type of award for U.S. Geothermal also serves as “a critical vote of confidence” from the government, as U.S. Geothermal CEO and President Daniel Kunz put it in a statement today. But it’s not a sure sign of a winning technology. Solyndra, for example, has some of the highest manufacturing and capital factory costs around, and it’s not yet clear how successful Solyndra will be. (Check out Katie’s post questioning whether the loan guarantee for Solyndra was a mistake.)

Jonathan Silver, the former venture capitalist whom the Obama administration tapped to lead the DOE’s loan and loan guarantee programs, told us in an interview recently that the agency is “deliberately not in the business of attempting to select winners and losers.” The goal is to support “big, important technologies that will transform their sector on the energy spectrum,” and to do that Silver said the agency will likely support multiple, competing technologies and companies in the same space.

In addition to having the DOE in its corner, U.S. Geothermal has something else going for it with this project: a ready and waiting customer. The utility Idaho Power Company has agreed to buy up to 25 megawatts of power each year from the U.S. Geothermal project for 25 years. According to U.S. Geothermal, the agreement establishes a flat energy price of $96 per megawatt-hour starting in 2012. Initially the price will increase each year by 6 percent, and toward the end of the 25th-year the annual contract will step-up to be just 1.33 percent. Overall, Idaho Power Company’s agreement with U.S. Geothermal subsidiary USG Oregon delivers a levelized price of about $117.65 per megawatt-hour over the 25 years.

More awards are in the pipeline. Silver told us in late May that the agency expected to make up to four loan guarantees in June.

Photos courtesy of U.S. Geothermal

Related research on GigaOM Pro (subscription required):

Cleantech Financing Trends: 2010 and Beyond