If one didn't know better, Joseph Moore could be talking about one of his grandchildren or a shiny sports car parked in his garage.
But on this day, amid a blustery desert wind against the backdrop of a barren sage-brush landscape north of Milford, Beaver County, Moore is talking about rocks, drilling rigs, super hot heat and the power of the ground that lies beneath him.
Moore is principal investigator of the Frontier Observatory for Research in Geothermal Energy, or FORGE, a U.S. Department of Energy project aiming to bring geothermal energy to the market on a utility scale that is financially viable and scientifically sound.
The day before the Thursday media tour of the site, the project reached a milestone proving two deep vertical wells that link to a long horizontal conduit are indeed connected much like a radiator in a car that operates on a circulating loop.
"It's the first time we made that connection," Moore said, smiling.
The project injected 1,800 barrels of water into one well at five barrels a minute and achieved success when it flowed along the horizontal pathway to travel up the production well.
Moore, a research professor at the University of Utah's Energy and Geoscience Institute, said FORGE distinguishes itself from conventional geothermal extraction because it is creating the reservoir itself from which the energy is tapped.
Water is pumped deep into the super-heated rocks thousands of feet underground to ultimately turn into steam to power a turbine to produce electrons. Imagine capturing that steam from geothermal pools throughout the West.
Not far away from FORGE sits PacifiCorp's Blundell Geothermal Plant which produces 38 megawatts of energy from an existing underground water resource but at much lower temperatures.
