About

Center for Geothermal Studies Brochure >>

The USC Center for Geothermal Studies (CGS) strives to promote excellence in research and development with practical focus and multi-disciplinary education for geothermal energy. This will span different technical and operational challenges associated with geothermal energy from exploration and production to its usage and transmission in a safe and cost effective manner. The center’s aim includes developing new research programs and initiatives as well as courses and workshops and help transferring new technologies to the industry. We will facilitate multi-disciplinary research in collaboration with other institutes and departments at USC where we can identify potential applications to geothermal energy. To ensure relevance and high level technical content of the program we have established a Strategic Advisory Board (SAB) and Technical Advisory Board (TAB).

We intend to use our existing ongoing R&D programs as a platform to extend to other important related topics. This will include developing collaborative and synergistic R&D projects with other USC entities. Among them are, USC Energy InstituteUSC petroleum Engineering program and Material ScienceCiSOFT,  the Earth Sciences department including its affiliated Southern California Earthquake CenterInformation Science Institute (ISI), the Electrical Engineering departmentComputer Sciences department and System Engineering Architecture department.  Our multidisciplinary programs will provide the necessary synergy to ensure technical excellence to meet the grand challenges for Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) and geothermal related issues.

Finally, we will form alliances with other academic institutions with complimentary technical capabilities, different DOE National Laboratories, and major geothermal energy producers to further broaden the depth and breadth of our programs and making them more relevant. Through the guidance from SAB and TAB as well as regularly scheduled seminars, workshops we will work in close co-operation with the industry and academic experts to focus on the current and relevant problems and help transfer technologies from many other fields such as fossil oil, intelligent systems, material science, power engineering, smart grids and others to geothermal related applications.  The information developed through extensive research at this center is provided to individuals, organizations or companies interested through our publications and other outreach activities.