The Bureau of Land Management is hosting another geothermal auction in Reno August 5th. This time there are 35 parcels totaling 105,311 acres available for intrepid entrepreneurs to bid on and attempt to win. If you’re in the market, good luck! We expect that the money will be big this time around…

Link: Nevada BLM Auction Info

The US Department of Energy (DoE) will host a conference call at 10am EDT on July 25th to discuss the Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) for Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) Research, Development, and Demonstration.

The session will be comprised of an overview of the FOA by DoE staff followed by a question and answer period. The catch is that live questions will not be accepted on the teleconference, these questions must be submitted in advance via this web form no later than 12pm EDT on July 24th.

The FOA itself consists of two topic areas; Component Technologies R&D and System Demonstrations. For the R&D topic, the DoE seeks projects that address key aspects of engineered reservoir creation, management, and utilization by developing tools and techniques including zonal isolation, downhole pumps, fracture characterization, imaging fluid flow, tracers and tracer interpretation, high-temperature logging tools/sensors, and stimulation prediction models. The total funding for this area is $40M with a ceiling of $5M per award and no minimum. The award will take the form of a grant or cooperative agreement.

For the Demonstrations topic, the DoE seeks projects to characterize a geothermal system with low natural productivity, develop a plan to stimulate the productivity of the system, stimulate a well in the system and monitor the productivity or injectivity of the well in relation to other wells available in the system with the goal of increasing productivity or inter-well connectivity. The total funding for this area is $50M with a ceiling of $15M per award with no minimum. The award will be in the form of a cooperative agreement where at least 20% of the total project expense will be funded by non-government sources.

Call Logistics:
Dial-in: 888-391-6568
Passcode: 61564
Applications for the FOA itself are due by 11:59pm EDT on August 12, 2008.

June 17-18, 2008, the SMU Geothermal Laboratory will host the Geothermal Utilization Conference focusing on co-production in the petrochemical and electricity generation fields along with EGS. Since petrochemical fields tend to be pressurized, full of water, and hot, it is only natural that secondary harvest of electricity is possible.

Details about the conference are available here.

Calpine Turbine at the Geysers

Attribution: KQED

This morning there is news on the wire that New Jersey utility NRG has bid over $11B in an all stock deal to acquire Calpine. This is a 6% premium over the closing price of Calpine yesterday. With 26GW of generation capacity (a little less than 1GW geothermal, the rest natural gas) Calpine is a significant generator who only emerged from bankruptcy protection 4 months ago. Should the deal be consummated, the combined utility would have nearly 50GW of generation capacity in hydro, geothermal, petrochemical, coal, and nuclear powered generation.

The Calpine board is considering the offer at present. This is the latest in a wave of consolidate of the fossil fuel generators. Let’s hope the significant geothermal operation is not lost/damaged in the shuffle.

Links:
Calpine
NRG
AP Story on Bid

Western GeoPower scored a nice deal yesterday inking a 20 year PPA with the Northern California Power Association for around $26M/year and a purchase price of $98/MWh. We thought the $78/MWh + wheeling costs that was cut earlier this year between the City of Anaheim and Raser was lucrative. $98/MWh is great and reflects the new CPUC pricing model.

With the deal, WGP has a $500M+ revenue stream set against a ~$120M capital expenditure. With operating costs of $30/MWh, that leaves a whopping $68/MWh for debt service, other SG&A, taxes, and net income.

Links:
Western GeoPower
Raser Technologies
Northern California Power Association (NCPA)
California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC)