AltaRock Energy Inc. is a privately held corporation that focuses on the development of

geothermal energy Geothermal energy is the thermal energy in the Earth's crust which originates from the formation of the planet and from radioactive decay of materials in currently uncertain but possibly roughly equal proportions. The high temperature and pres ...

resources and

enhanced geothermal systems An enhanced geothermal system (EGS) generates geothermal electricity without the need for natural convective hydrothermal resources. Until recently, geothermal power systems have exploited only resources where naturally occurring heat, water, and ...

(EGS). It is headquartered in

Seattle, Washington Seattle ( ) is a port, seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the county seat, seat of King County, Washington, King County, Washington (state), Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in bo ...

and has a technology development office in

Sausalito, California Sausalito (Spanish language, Spanish for "small willow grove") is a city in Marin County, California, Marin County, California, United States, located southeast of Marin City, California, Marin City, south-southeast of San Rafael, California ...

. AltaRock has filed patent applications and holds exclusive licenses for related intellectual property related to EGS. In 2008 it started its first project near

The Geysers The Geysers is the world's largest geothermal field, containing a complex of 18 geothermal power plants, drawing steam from more than 350 wells, located in the Mayacamas Mountains approximately north of San Francisco, California. Geysers produce ...

in California to demonstrate the ability of EGS to be a reliable, renewable and clean source for the production of

electric power Electric power is the rate at which electrical energy is transferred by an electric circuit. The SI unit of power is the watt, one joule per second. Standard prefixes apply to watts as with other SI units: thousands, millions and billions o ...

. AltRock's efforts to expand EGS technologies have been encouraged by a 2006

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

(MIT) report that concluded EGS has the potential to provide 100 GWe (gigawatts of electricity) or more for the U.S. by 2050. Co-founded in 2007 by

Andrew Perlman Andrew Perlman (born June 19, 1975) is an American entrepreneur who has co-founded nine venture-backed companies in the telecom, high-tech, pharmaceuticals, energy, water, and biotechnology industries. He is currently General Partner of GreatPoin ...

, Susan Petty, and other business partners, AltaRock has received backing from investors such as

Google.org Google.org, founded in October 2005, is the charitable arm of Google, a multinational technology company. The organization has committed roughly US$100 million in investments and grants to nonprofits annually. The organization is noted for se ...

, Advanced Technology Ventures and Vulcan Capital, as well as demonstration grant funding from the

United States Department of Energy The United States Department of Energy (DOE) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government that oversees U.S. national energy policy and manages the research and development of nuclear power and nuclear weapons in the United Stat ...

(DOE).

Projects

The Newberry EGS Demonstration

The company currently has a demonstration project underway about 30 miles south of

Bend, Oregon Bend is a city in and the county seat of Deschutes County, Oregon, United States. It is the principal city of the Bend Metropolitan Statistical Area. Bend is Central Oregon's largest city, with a population of 99,178 at the time of the 2020 U.S ...

in the

Deschutes National Forest The Deschutes National Forest is a United States National Forest located in parts of Deschutes, Klamath, Lake, and Jefferson counties in central Oregon. It comprises along the east side of the Cascade Range. In 1908, the Deschutes National ...

. The Newberry EGS Demonstration is located on an existing Federal lease designated for geothermal use and is supported by a committee that includes representatives of the community, environmental groups, government and the geothermal industry. AltaRock's Newberry EGS demonstration will create an EGS reservoir in the high-temperature, low-permeability rock present on the northwest flank of the

Newberry Volcano Newberry Volcano is a large active shield-shaped stratovolcano located about south of Bend, Oregon, United States, east of the major crest of the Cascade Range, within the Newberry National Volcanic Monument. Its highest point is Paulina ...

. The demonstration will use hydraulic shearing (as opposed to

hydraulic fracturing Fracking (also known as hydraulic fracturing, hydrofracturing, or hydrofracking) is a well stimulation technique involving the fracturing of bedrock formations by a pressurized liquid. The process involves the high-pressure injection of "frack ...

) and other drilling techniques to induce and sustain fluid flow and geothermal heat extraction, culminating in the conceptual design of a commercial-scale well field and power plant. Water usage and induced seismicity analyses for the demonstration site have been completed and conclude the project poses little risk to the area or to local communities.

The Geysers Demonstration

In 2008, AltaRock started a demonstration project at

geothermal field. The field has hundreds of megawatts of unused electric power generating capacity due to its lack of steam, caused by several decades of reservoir depletion. At The Geysers, AltaRock intended to re-drill a well originally drilled in 1988. Three attempts were made to re-drill the well from various depths, but the drilling assembly became stuck each time in an unstable

serpentinite Serpentinite is a rock composed predominantly of one or more serpentine group minerals, the name originating from the similarity of the texture of the rock to that of the skin of a snake. Serpentinite has been called ''serpentine'' or ''ser ...

formation. Drilling at The Geysers demonstration site has been suspended while the company evaluates a number of alternative well locations at the Geysers and elsewhere for demonstrating this technology.

Blue Mountain

Blue Mountain is a traditional geothermal energy site in the

Black Rock Desert __NOTOC__ The Black Rock Desert is a semi-arid region (in the Great Basin shrub steppe eco-region) of lava beds and playa, or alkali flats, situated in the Black Rock Desert–High Rock Canyon Emigrant Trails National Conservation Area, a si ...

of Nevada that opened in 2009 but has since underperformed. AltaRock Energy was originally hired by EIG Global Energy Partners in 2014 to help bring the site up to full capacity with its technology. In order to bring capacity at the site up to 50 megawatts, the company plans to first use hydroshearing possibly followed by drilling. Hydroshearing, a technology developed by AltaRock to improve the performance of existing geothermal wells, involves pumping cold water and particulate materials into an underground reservoir in order to block parts of the well and allow small cracks to form. The injected materials then degrade, allowing the new cracks to open up. These cracks permit added water to flow and be used to generate steam and thus energy. The Blue Mountain acquisition will test the viability of AltaRock's business model, which relies on raising revenue from upgrading existing geothermal sites in order to finance new EGS sites in the future.

References

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External links

AltaRock Energy Inc. websiteGeothermal Technologies Program - Enhanced Geothermal Systems
(U.S. Department of Energy)
Geothermal Technologies Program
(U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE)) Renewable energy companies of the United States Geothermal energy in the United States Electric power companies of the United States Renewable energy in California American companies established in 2007 Energy companies established in 2007 Renewable resource companies established in 2007 2007 establishments in Washington (state)