On the Road: GRC Coso Geothermal and GreenFire Energy Field Trip

摘要

On the last day of the recent GRC Annual Meeting & Expo in Palm Springs, California, 52 GRC attendees boarded a bus for a GRC field trip to visit the Coso Geothermal Fields and the GreenFire Energy closed-loop geothermal demonstration project. The Coso Geothermal Field is located in the central Coso Range, approximately 160 miles north-northeast of Los Angeles and bounded by the Sierra Nevada Range to the west and the Mojave Desert to the southeast. This trip was particularly intriguing because the Coso Geothermal Field lies within the boundaries of the U.S. Naval Air Weapons Station (NAWS), China Lake, where access is extremely limited as it serves as a research and development facility for air-to-air and air-toground testing. The military geothermal program is managed by the Navy Geothermal Program Office and has the broad function of geothermal resource development and resource management on land that the military services.