Energy innovation for a power-hungry world

In the high desert of southwestern Utah, a crane lowered a 60-foot-long metal tool into a well, heading for fractured rock a mile deep where scientists are refining techniques for Earth’s heat to generate electricity almost anywhere. 

Sarah Sausan, a PhD student on a team led by Stanford energy scientist Roland Horne, watched from the well site as the device descended through layers of rock to depths where temperatures reach over 400 degrees Fahrenheit. 

Sensors housed within the tool measure levels of chloride seeping from fractured rock and enable Horne’s team to map how fluids move through the well. This kind of map helps geothermal energy engineers decide where to drill and how to manage circulation so water picks up the right amount of heat to drive a turbine and generate electricity. 

“You want a wider distribution of flow over a larger volume of rock to get the most out of your system,” said Horne, a professor of energy science and engineering at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability.

Horne’s work at the U.S. Department of Energy’s geothermal field lab in Utah, conducted in collaboration with Sandia National Laboratory in the summer of 2024, is part of a push by researchers to make reliable, clean, and affordable energy a reality for all. Among other efforts, Stanford scholars are expanding geothermal power beyond natural hot spots, converting agricultural waste into fuel while trapping carbon, collaborating with farming communities to deploy solar panels among crops, and finding ways for the existing power grid to absorb more renewable energy and meet more demand than utilities once thought possible. 

“We need to innovate to eliminate the green premium, making affordable clean energy available to everyone,” said Stanford materials scientist William Chueh, director of the Precourt Institute for Energy.