Petrolern LLC, a leading-edge Atlanta-based green energy technology company, was announced as the winner of a major software development contest by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM) to support its SMART (Science-informed Machine Learning to Accelerate Real Time Decisions in the Subsurface) Initiative. Petrolern will receive $150,000, with an opportunity to advance to the next phase in the competition for another $900,000.
Petrolern’s GeoDeckTM Platform is a web-based application that makes the interaction between scientific variables and their spatial and temporal dimensions straightforward and intuitive using virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR). GeoDeckTM is designed to eliminate or minimize rigorous high-performance computing setups, time, cost, and complexities when visualizing big subsurface data. It makes the visualization process efficient, productive, and scalable. It helps users to tell compelling stories by selecting, filtering, and transforming the data without heavy user interventions. GeoDeckTM enables users to generate actionable insights from raw data just in a few clicks. It is a platform that all stakeholders in the field could collaborate simultaneously while they are immersed in datasets. It has applications to environmentally secure monitoring of subsurface operations including CO2 or hydrogen underground storage, geothermal energy development, and safer oil and gas production.
CEO Dr. Hamed Soroush remarks, “I am incredibly proud of our team and their passion to innovate and create value-added software for the clean energy transition. GeoDeckTM provides the opportunity for decision-makers to make smarter decisions in real time, resulting in safer and cleaner subsurface activities.”
“At Petrolern, we believe experts and non-experts should be able to make timely decisions without data overload and with a 360-degree vantage point. To achieve this vision, GeoDeckTM uses state-of-the-art data-handling technologies in combination with ever-increasing VR and AR technologies. GeoDeckTM offers this integration to load seamlessly on the web with no need for installation or download,” said Dr. Salah Faroughi, Petrolern’s Lead Scientist.
NETL’s Senior Fellow Dr. Grant Bromhal said, “We are excited to see our Phase 1 SMART Visualization Platform Prize Challenge winners move forward and advance their projects while working with the SMART technical team. This challenge will be a first-of-its-kind tool that will use science-based machine learning and data analytics to visualize key subsurface features to quickly and accurately reveal how the subsurface behaves.”
