Washington, DC – Congressman Tom McClintock today announced the award of $4 million in competitive grants to a pair of recipients in the Fourth Congressional District to research, develop and demonstrate cutting-edge geothermal technologies.  The Congressional office worked with the Modoc Contracting Company of Canby to win a $2 million Department of Energy award that will help demonstrate the use of cascading technology in tapping the energy potential of geothermal fluids.  The Oski Energy firm of Susanville also received a $2 million award to test innovative power cycle technology.

“These awards were made based on the merits of the projects,” Congressman McClintock said.  “Seven grants were awarded nationwide based on the strength and value of the proposals.  The fact that two of the awards are to companies in our resource-rich region yet again illustrates that worthwhile projects can successfully obtain funding through the regular merit-based appropriations process.” 

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The following projects have been selected for an award:

• Modoc Contracting Company – Canby, Modoc County, Calif. - $2 million:
Modoc proposes to create a complete “cascaded” use of a geothermal resource (from low temperature power generation through several direct-use applications including a direct heating system, greenhouse operation and fish farm) that will demonstrate energy-efficient use of the geothermal fluids.  The company will procure, install and commission an engineered, scalable and duplicable generator unit to use the waste heat from an existing geothermal plant. The “cascading” application will have significant implications for the nearly 1,500 potential low to moderate temperature well sites located within towns and medium-sized cities in the western United States. 

• Oski Energy, LLC – Susanville, Lassen County, Calif. - $2 million:
Oski Energy will test an innovative power cycle technology that uses a mixture of ammonia and water as the working fluid. It will deploy novel system design techniques that will allow optimized, real-time, self-tuning of the power cycle process that will compensate for variations in the geothermal production fluid and flow rate, as well as changes in ambient temperature that adversely affect power generation.