Michael Kanellos 10 29 09, 6:24 PM

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DOE Dishes Out $338M for Geothermal: The Winners Are…

Is everybody but me getting money?

The Department of Energy once again opened the money bag. This time, it awarded $338 million for 123 projects. The funds will be matched by $353 million in private funds.

The DOE divided the awards into six categories. The three categories to get the most money were innovations in exploration and drilling ($98.1 million), ground source heat pumps ($61.9 million) and enhanced geothermal systems demonstration ($51.4 million).

Among individual companies, AltaRock Energy will build a demonstration of its enhanced geothermal recovery technology in Oregon. In September, the company, which has received money from Google and Kleiner, Perkins, stopped drilling at its California site. AltaRock injects water into the ground, heats it up and then exploits the steam to crank a turbine. Some fear that the technique can induce earthquakes.

Meanwhile Magma received $10 million in two grants, including one to study how to use oil and gas equipment more effectively in geothermal. Naknek Electric got $12.4 million to build geothermal systems to power three communities in Alaska. A number of companies received grants to find geothermal wells in Montana, Hawaii, California, Oregon and Nevada. You can see the whole list here.

Geothermal constitutes only 5 percent of the renewable energy consumed in the U.S., and renewables only constitute 7 percent of the total energy diet, meaning that geothermal makes up only 0.35 of a percent of the total energy budget. Most of the potential exists in the western U.S. But look at the bright side. Geothermal is baseline power, which means the amount of power produced does not vary with the weather. The amount generated right now is five times the amount generated by solar.

The U.S. consumes about 100 quads of energy a year.