Southern Methodist University's (SMU) Geothermal Laboratory has been awarded a $5.25 million grant by the U.S. Department of Energy to provide data for the developing National Geothermal Database System (NGDS). SMU's grant allocation is included in $338 million in Recovery Act funding, which is intended to help dramatically expand geothermal production in the United States.

SMU will work with a diverse team from academia, industry and national labs with experience in conventional hydrothermal geothermal resource assessment, enhanced geothermal systems (EGS), oil and gas data, geo-pressure geothermal and produced water non-conventional geothermal systems in providing the data.

"The primary benefit of this project is that it will support developers of geothermal power plants by decreasing the costs of the resource identification and the risks inherent in the exploration phase," says SMU's David Blackwell, Hamilton Professor of Geothermal Studies. "The project will rescue important data from deterioration or complete loss, and provide a set of tools to be used by other parties to submit data to the NGDS."