The US Department of Energy (DOE) Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) announced $30 million to increase geothermal power production by unlocking superhot reservoirs deep within the Earth. (DE-FOA-0003556)

Currently, geothermal baseload production in the US is limited to 4 gigawatts (GW). ARPA-E’s Stimulate Utilization of Plentiful Energy in Rocks through High-temperature Original Technologies (SUPERHOT) program aims to provide access to superhot reservoirs capable of producing 10-20 GW of reliable baseload power at a competitive cost.

The SUPERHOT program will explore modification of conventional well designs or completely novel designs, materials, and materials systems that satisfy requirements to survive superhot conditions. SUPERHOT’s goals are to develop robust geothermal well construction capable of a 15-year operational life and enable transfer of heat from the surrounding geologic formation to the well.

The program will have two categories:

• Category 1: Technologies related to the construction of robust super-hot wells and validation services for quality assurance of new well designs and materials. This focus will involve new materials, novel well solutions, and state-of-the-art testing facilities to assess these new approaches.

• Category 2: Technologies related to the extraction of heat from the reservoir to the well. The focus of this category is to develop fracture based and non-fracture-based methods for extracting heat from a super-hot reservoir (potentially composed of ductile rocks) to a working fluid in a well.

Projects will seek to enable access to resources with temperatures greater than 375 °C and pressures greater than 22 megapascals.

SUPERHOT builds on ARPA-E’s history of support for enhanced geothermal projects. ARPA-E’s work in this area includes supporting industry leaders Fervo Energy, AltaRock Energy, and Eden Geopower.