The US Department of Energy (DOE) Geothermal Technologies Office (GTO) has selected two small businesses to receive grants to support research on geothermal topics. The companies and their projects are as follows:

South Carolina-based Atlas Energy Ltd. Co. will be receiving $206,500 for the project “Advanced Instrumentation and Deployment Methods for High Resolution Shallow Temperature Measurements.” The project aims to test and prove a method for obtaining reliable temperature measurements from shallow depth at half the cost compared to current methods.

Arizona-based Zonge Engineering and Research Organization, Inc. will also be receiving $197,406 for the project “Airborne Drone Electromagnetic System for Advanced Data Collection for Geothermal Exploration.” The goal of this project is to develop the entire ecosystem required to deploy, process, and interpret drone-based electromagnetic geophysical data, reducing the cost of development and management of critical resources, including geothermal energy and critical minerals. The project leverages on recent advances in drone technology, magnetic field sensors, and machine learning algorithms that make a drone-based system more practical compared to helicopter-borne alternatives.

The selection of the two companies is part of the US DOE’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) awards. The SBIR program is providing more than $52 million for small businesses across the country to facilitate the research and development of clean energy projects. The call for interest for this funding round was announced earlier this year with a focus on Advanced Data Collection for Geothermal Exploration.