DTN 142: AI Finds Hidden Geothermal Resources

“If you do it correctly, you can use government funding to develop your tech on a roadmap that you would have done either way. Why wouldn’t you take non-dilutive funding while leading toward a potential marquee customer? You develop your commercial tech and can sell to commercial customers off the back of your development work with the government. That can bridge you over the longer timelines it takes for government acquisitions or procurement.

But it’s super opaque, so my piece of advice is get advice. Don’t try to go at it yourself. If you don’t have a national security background, you will flounder. You need to work with either internally or externally experts who can guide you through the process. Get language written in the NDAA. That’s a long-term process, and a lot of folks think “I need to develop my technology and then I’ll go do that.” That’s the wrong attitude.”

“Sometimes geothermal hot spots are obvious, marked by geysers and hot springs on the planet’s surface. But in other places, they’re obscured thousands of feet underground. Now AI could help uncover these hidden pockets of potential power.

A startup company called Zanskar announced today that it’s used AI and other advanced computational methods to uncover a blind geothermal system—meaning there aren’t signs of it on the surface—in the western Nevada desert. The company says it’s the first blind system that’s been identified and confirmed to be a commercial prospect in over 30 years. 

Historically, finding new sites for geothermal power was a matter of brute force. Companies spent a lot of time and money drilling deep wells, looking for places where it made sense to build a plant.

Zanskar’s approach is more precise. With advancements in AI, the company aims to “solve this problem that had been unsolvable for decades, and go and finally find those resources and prove that they’re way bigger than previously thought,” says Carl Hoiland, the company’s cofounder and CEO.”