The future of geothermal power in Utah

MILFORD, Beaver County — Geothermal power could play a major role in Utah’s clean energy future.

Currently, the U.S. Department of Energy is conducting a multi-year experiment just outside of Milford, that could help make that more viable and affordable.

KSL TV takes a look at what they’re doing in southern Utah, and how it could help forge Utah’s energy future.

‘A tremendous resource’

The release of steam could become a more common site in Utah if state leaders make the push for more geothermal power. Technology used at the site near Milford could help make it more affordable, and widely available.

“It represents a tremendous resource that we need to take advantage of,” said Dr. Joseph Moore, principal investigator at the Utah Frontier Observatory for Research in Geothermal Energy, otherwise known as FORGE.

At the site, an injection well is drilled down about 8,500 feet, sending water into the hot rocks, creating fractures that serve as reservoirs and the water is sent up another well.
Then the water is sent back down through those reservoirs, heating up to around 370 degrees, and up a production well where the hot water could be used to produce power, before being cycled back down again. The Department of Energy ran this cycle for 30 days.

“If we can do that, and we can caluclate fairly simply what the temperature will be at any depth,” Moore said. “We can go anywhere in the world to build the system like this.”

Eventually, you could see geothermal wells powering communities and providing radiant heat, similar to one in the middle of Reykjavik, Iceland that delegates from Utah had a look at in June.

“The resource is enormous,” Moore said. “It can’t be used up. There’s always heat coming up from the center of the earth and we’re trying to take advantage of that.”

Another plus

 Another advantage is the footprint of geothermal is small, at least from the view above ground.

In fact, Moore said a five-acre geothermal plant can provide about as much power as a wind farm that spans seven miles. And geothermal doesn’t need wind or sun to keep it going.

That’s what Moore believes makes it a viable base-load power source — one that you can depend on consistently and in all conditions. And in the most recent 30-day circulation test, 420 gallons of water per minute were being injected and recycled.

“We estimate right here that we’re recovering about 95% of the water that we inject,” Moore said.

And that’s crucial for producing geothermal power in Utah, where water can be a scarce resource.

Making the best use of water

“We don’t want to have to buy water,” Moore said. “We don’t want to truck water in. (And) We want to make the best use of water as possible. And we can do that by keeping a closed loop.”

That means more than 90% of that water is used over and over again.

FORGE sits in the middle of Utah’s Renewable Energy Corridor, which includes wind and solar farms. And along with a couple of private geothermal plants, it sends energy to California and other neighboring states. But not to Utah, at least not yet.

What researchers find here, however, could help change that.

“I’ve been involved in geothermal energy since the mid 70s,” Moore said. “And, you know, we’ve never seen a boom and technology advancements like we’ve seen in the last three or four years.”