Supporting U.S. efforts to reduce dependency on fossil fuels and safeguarding the nation’s military readiness through collaboration with the U.S. Navy.

Fallon FORGE: An EGS Field Laboratory

Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) produce energy by injecting and circulating water through fractured rock, then withdrawing the hot water and using it to supply a geothermal power plant.

  • Meets all FORGE selection criteria

    Excellent study area for EGS with temperatures greater than 350ºF at depths of about 5,000 feet.

  • Location

    Over 15 sq. miles within and adjacent to the Naval Air Station Fallon (NASF) and Ormat leased area.

  • Good for Nevada, Good for the Country

    EGS could provide more than 100 GW for the American people; the equivalent of 100,000,000 homes.

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The Fallon FORGE project is located in Churchill County, Nevada. It is dedicated to the advancement of technologies for Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) under the US Department of Energy’s FORGE (Frontier Observatory for Research in Geothermal Energy) initiative.

EGS is a clean and renewable source of domestic energy. If chosen, the Fallon FORGE site would be a unique research and development facility that will develop methods and technologies needed to enable widespread EGS commercialization, increasing our nation’s energy security. Using technologies developed through the FORGE project, EGS has the potential to provide more than 100 gigawatts, enough to power 100,000,000 American homes.

FALLON Site Location

Fallon, Nevada, a community of approximately 8,600 people located about 60 miles east of Reno, is the county seat of Churchill County. The FORGE site is approximately 7 miles southeast of the City of Fallon, on land within and adjacent to southern part of Naval Air Station Fallon (NASF), as shown in the figure to the right. Home of the US Naval Strike and Air Warfare Center, NASF is the Navy’s premier tactical air warfare training center.

Objectives

  • Establish and manage a well characterized and highly instrumented field test site dedicated to performing EGS research where the broader engineering and science community can develop, test, and improve the science, engineering, and technologies required to advance EGS to commercial reality.
  • Develop a research and development (R&D) plan, in collaboration with stakeholders, to maximize the benefit to the taxpayer that will most effectively reduce the risk to industry and enable development of our Nation’s enormous EGS resource.
  • Promote a collaborative research environment, making data readily available to the science and engineering community, and communicating FORGE advancements to industry and the general public.
  • Work in partnership with the U.S. Navy to reduce our Nation’s dependency on fossil fuels and to safeguard the military readiness for the United States.

The Fallon FORGE website was developed by Sandia National Laboratories with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Geothermal Technologies Office (GTO).