Small Business Vouchers Pilot logo.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) is proud to announce the third round of the Small Business Vouchers (SBV) Pilot. DOE began accepting Requests for Assistance (RFA) on Monday, October 10 after a formal announcement at the SXSW Eco’s Energy Startup Showcase.

DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) is putting the world-class resources of the national labs at your fingertips with the SBV Pilot. In the first two rounds, 76 small businesses received vouchers for approximately $15 million in technical assistance from national labs to help bring the next generation of clean-energy technologies to market. The SBV pilot gives our nation’s clean-tech small businesses the opportunity to take their innovative products to the next level. By supporting their growth, the U.S. helps these companies make a more meaningful impact on the economy and clean-energy sector.

Over rounds three and four, $12 million is available for vouchers across EERE’s clean-energy sectors.  EERE’s Geothermal Technologies Office (GTO) has nearly $800,000 available to support vouchers in all of its mission areas of EGS, Hydrothermal, Low Temperature, and Systems Analysis. Companies have until November 13 to submit RFAs for round three; round four is expected to be announced early in 2017.

Past areas of emphasis for geothermal technologies include:

EGS:

  • Reservoir characterization, including coupled imaging, drilling for interrogation and monitoring, high-temperature tools and sensors
  • Reservoir creation, including formation access, fracture characterization, zonal isolation, permeability enhancement technologies
  • Reservoir sustainability, including long-term testing, monitoring, and operational feedback
  • Improving the fundamental understanding of the key mechanisms controlling coupled thermo-mechanical-chemical-hydrologic processes at depth
  • Gaining a critical and detailed knowledge of fracture mechanics and heat transfer in low permeability rock formations
  • Continuous real-time monitoring of microseismic activity and other geophysical and geochemical signatures

Geothermal Systems Analysis:

  • Environmental impacts, including water resource assessments
  • Policy and regulatory barriers to development and deployment, including projects that remove deployment barriers
  • Economic modeling and validation of geothermal technologies
  • Collecting and disseminating data for public use to spur geothermal development
  • Analysis that support EGS, Hydrothermal, and Low Temperature and Coproduced Resources subprograms
  • Educational activities

Low Temperature:

  • Mineral recovery, which is a potential value-added pathway to improve low-temperature geothermal system project economics. By developing additional revenue streams from geothermal brines, the economic viability of geothermal projects will increase, concurrently expanding the geothermal energy's potential geographic distribution.
  • Geothermal direct use, that harvests the heat from geothermal brines and uses it to directly heat (or cool) buildings, as well as for other beneficial thermal processes.
  • Thermal desalination technologies, which can promote are the expansion of the geothermal market through the development of technologies that can treat brines or produced fluids.
  • Innovative energy conversion, additional revenue-stream creation, and further advancement of both traditional and newly developed power cycles. Specific developments in this area could include renewable power hybrid cycles, compressed air energy storage (CAES) in conjunction with geothermal power generation, and power system improvements, with the goal of steadily increasing the value of geothermal resources.

Businesses interested in SBV funding must be U.S.-based and U.S.-owned, with no more than 500 full-time employees worldwide. Individual vouchers range from $50,000 to $300,000 per small business and can be used to perform collaborative research or access to lab instrumentation or facilities. Companies selected must also provide a 20 percent cost share for completing voucher work. EERE welcomes the opportunity to collaborate with small businesses that have little to no experience working with a DOE national laboratory.

Previous awardees include:

  • Anactisis. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
    Working with Oak Ridge National Laboratory
  • Elko Heat Co. City of Wells, Nevada
    Working with Lawrence Berkeley National Labs and the National Energy Technology Laboratory
  • GreenFire Energy. Emeryville, California
    Working with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
  • Hyperlight Energy. La Jolla, California 
    Working with National Renewable Energy Laboratory
  • FastCAP. Boston, Massachusetts 
    Working with Sandia National Laboratories
  • Geothermal Design Center. Asheville, North Carolina 
    Working with Oak Ridge National Laboratory

For more information please contact Josh Mengers at joshua.mengers@ee.doe.gov.