The premise
Looking at a map of operating renewable power plants in the US, there are several major types of renewable power which are viable: Solar, Wind, Geothermal, and Hydroelectric. To further narrow the scope of this project, I decided the best approach is to focus on an area of the US of interest to me and/or a specific renewable energy sector.
Observations
While looking at the map of renewable power plants, I noticed that there is a cluster of geothermal power plants in Nevada, close to the Reno metropolitan area. I find this interesting because I grew up in South Lake Tahoe, and I know that because the Tahoe Basin is an environmentally sensitive part of the country, they have many regulations as to where they can get power from. For example, power lines have to come from outside the basin.
Creating a Map
To create an initial map to show my hypothesis, I found a treasure trove of geothermal GIS data known as Geothermal Prospector1 from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). By creating raster layers of expected temperatures at various depths and overlaying the vertices of existing geothermal power plants, I can see that there is indeed a correlation between temperature and power plant location.
To further show the location of interest (Nevada), I created a polygon in the shape of the state and used it as a clipping layer to clip the temperature layer and therefore show only the area of the state of Nevada highlighted.
Next steps
My next steps in this project are to further investigate this cluster of geothermal power plants and delve deeper into the Geothermal Prospector GIS data about them, such as borehole locations, environmentally sensitive areas, etc. I will then use this data to create maps in ArcGIS that I can then use to make further inferences about the geothermal market in the area, as well as set up the apparatus for a proper overarching question that this project will attempt to answer.