The largest geothermal field in the world is The Geysers, near San Francisco. NREL is working with Calpine Corporation to improve the efficiency of its geothermal facilities.
The Geothermal Technologies Program's (GTP) Research and Development (R&D) activities in geothermal energy are carried out in partnership with industry, academia, and the DOE national laboratories to improve technologies for finding, characterizing, accessing, and producing geothermal resources. While the program has two performance goals to be reached by 2015, it also conducts longer-term R&D on surface and subsurface opportunities for system cost reduction. R&D priorities are focused on overcoming technology barriers that have the greatest potential to hinder the development of viable enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) at acceptable cost, risk, and timeframes.
GTP's R&D efforts are focused in three program areas:
In addition, GTP supports deployment activities designed to move advanced technologies into the geothermal industry.
The work performed by GTP in geothermal energy is consistent with the federal government's role of investing in high-risk, high-value research, development, and demonstration that is essential to the nation's future and that would not be independently conducted by the private sector. The strategy is to conduct cost-shared R&D activities and to maximize the leverage of limited resources by supporting appropriate activities being conducted by other entities.