Attachment 1 - Problem Statement.pdf

Tradewinds Geothermal for Electricity and Green Hydrogen Production

Problem Statement

Department of the Air Force (DAF) installations largely rely on off-site electricity to conduct its globe-spanning, national security missions on land and in air, sea, space, and cyberspace. Dependence on off-site electricity, however, creates mission risks, because electrical grids are susceptible to outages from extreme weather and cybersecurity attacks by determined adversaries.

To maintain mission continuity and comply with congressional mandates to maintain energy resilience for all critical missions at each installation, DAF is seeking novel approaches to generate electricity at its installations using geothermal energy, because it can provide, continuous, resilient, carbon-free electricity regardless of weather conditions. While current renewable energy solutions such as wind and solar can supply on-site energy, such solutions provide intermittent power and require battery energy storage or other solutions to maintain energy resilience, unlike geothermal energy.

Despite its advantages, there are numerous technological and geological barriers to geothermal energy that have hindered the U.S. government’s ability to construct a utility-scale geothermal facility on federal land to directly supply electricity to its missions. While newer geothermal technologies such as advanced geothermal (i.e., closed-loop) and enhanced geothermal technologies hold the promise of producing power without having to rely on naturally occurring, hot, underground, water resources, such technologies do not currently exist at utility-scale.

Given the recent introduction of these new technologies, DAF is seeking to conduct a business process prototype to determine whether these technologies are technically and economically feasible at DAF installations in the United States. Under the prototype, the selected vendor(s) would (a) gather data through geoscientific exploration, (b) map out the resource, (c) develop an engineering design for a utility-scale facility to produce electricity and green hydrogen through electrolysis to power fuel cells, and (d) propose a deal structure for the sale of the electricity and hydrogen to DAF and others.

If electricity production is technically and economically feasible, the prototype project may be considered further for future construction of a utility-scale facility for the production of electricity and hydrogen. DAF would not execute a long-term contract under the prototype to purchase the electricity and hydrogen commodities.

Rather, DAF would execute a sole-source, follow-on contract only after the prototype has been successfully completed. Once the follow-on contract has been executed, construction of the facilities could proceed. DAF would not own the facilities, rather it is expected that a third party would own, operate, and maintain them. The government may also consider scaling a successful prototype to other DAF installations in the

United States.

Desired Solution Features

Desired solution features include the following attributes and capabilities:

• Technical: Plans for conducting any geoscientific exploration, remote sensing, mapping, drilling, etc., and integrating the data into a robust resource conceptual model,

• Examples: Provide case studies or examples on how to design a utility-scale facility (at least 5 megawatts) to meet and perhaps exceed the energy customer’s electricity or hydrogen needs cost-effectively,

• Financing: Plans for fully financing (100%) the prototype with DAF providing land, site control, and access to an installation’s facilities for the prototype project,

• Environmental: Plans for conducting all environmental analysis (e.g. National

Environmental Policy Act), and

• Teaming: Description of how you and/or the project team members will conduct any exploration, drilling, and design under the business process prototype, and the construction of the geothermal facility under a potential follow-on production contract.