Shifting Seasons, The Newberry Project, exploring Enhanced Geothermal Energy

Geothermal energy has been explored for several years as a source of clean energy. But the problem is, you have to be in a location that can provide easy access to the heat and water just below the surface... that is what will allow you to produce electricity.   

The Newberry Project is a test site with highly advanced drilling processes and other new techniques and technologies that will make the dream of extracting heat from the earth to generate a clean form of energy a reality. The project site is located on the western flank of Newberry Volcano in Central Oregon

Gabrjiel Grubac, senior completion engineer with Mazama Energy, explains the advancements and how they hope to make the system of Enhanced Geothermal Energy close to becoming a reality. 

"The biggest challenge in the past history, and we learned this from oil and gas, is how do you maintain that open flow of water, enough to sustain that flow... (for long periods of time). We have vetted (this process) in the lab, tested it in the field, and now have the ability to sustain a flow. And that has always the biggest focus as a completion engineer...How long can we sustain the flow, that is what we took from the oil and gas world, and I might be a little biased, but we made it better."

That technology, borrowed from the oil and gas industry, then improved by Mazama, has made it possible to keep the flow of water open and the project alive.  

Once you have a sustainable flow of water that will last, you have the ability to produce electricity almost anywhere. 

The scientists and engineers at Mazama are cautiously optimistic that this new technological breakthrough will allow them to prove that you can produce energy from the superhot rocks that lie just a few miles under the surface of the Earth.

This may very well be one of the biggest breakthroughs in the world of clean energy, and it may have come to fruition in Central Oregon.