The Bureau of Land Management sold 60 geothermal parcels covering 186,641 acres of Nevada at an online auction on Tuesday, Oct. 20, bringing in about $4.8 million, or nearly $4.83 million in winning bids. Ormat Technologies was the largest buyer by dollars, paying about $2.3 million for eight parcels. Two of the sold parcels overlap a site that NextEra Energy wants for a 1-gigawatt solar project.
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Geothermal leasing in the state has become a yearly ritual, and this edition brought in about half what the 2025 sale did. Winning bidders still owe payment and face BLM review before any lease is issued, so the sale is a first step toward new geothermal capacity, not a finished project.
60 of 83 parcels across ten counties
The BLM’s announcement of the sale offered 83 parcels totaling 265,691 acres through Efficient Markets’ Government Listings platform, in Lyon, Churchill, Mineral, Humboldt, Esmeralda, Lander, Nye, Eureka, Lincoln and White Pine counties. According to Utility Dive’s report on the results, none was pulled over protests, 10 were removed for other reasons, and 13 drew no bids, leaving 60 sold. Half of the bid, rental and royalty receipts go to Nevada, counties get 25%, and the U.S. Treasury takes the remaining 25%.
Measured by acreage, the 186,641 acres sold equal about 70% of the 265,691 acres offered. Utility Dive also pointed readers to its coverage of the Fervo and Google geothermal deal, which analysts read as evidence of how scarce baseload power has become, the backdrop against which developers are bidding for federal ground.
The spread of counties matters because geothermal resources in the Basin and Range are patchy. Lyon and Churchill sit near existing plants on the western side, while White Pine and Eureka are farther east and less developed, so a bid there is partly a bet on exploration results that do not yet exist. Utility Dive also pointed readers to its coverage of the Fervo and Google geothermal deal, which analysts read as evidence of how scarce baseload power has become.
Ormat, Invenergy and Desert Valley Land
Ormat’s eight parcels cover about 20,263 acres. Trade outlet ThinkGeoEnergy reports that Ormat Nevada paid $201 an acre, or $772,242, for a White Pine County parcel, the top bid, and also won a contiguous White Pine parcel at $176 an acre. By count, Invenergy Geothermal Development took the most parcels with 10, followed by Ormat Nevada with eight and Desert Valley Land Company with seven. The BLM may issue leases once review and payment are complete.
United Minerals and Mining bought the two parcels that overlap NextEra’s project, paying about $15,400 each.
NextEra’s Sawtooth Energy Center and the overlapping parcels
NextEra has a pending right-of-way application in Nye County for its proposed Sawtooth Energy Center, a 1 GW solar project. In its comments to the BLM, the company asked the agency to remove, defer or reconfigure three overlapping parcels to avoid a potentially incompatible leasehold interest before the BLM finishes reviewing the application. The BLM declined, saying it manages the land for multiple use. One of the three parcels was not listed in the auction.
The agency told NextEra that later uses, rights-of-way included, must not unreasonably interfere with geothermal operations by the leaseholder, and that the company must work with any potential lessee and adjust its operations to avoid land use conflicts. NextEra did not respond to Utility Dive’s request for comment.
NextEra’s objection shows the tension in stacking uses on the same ground. A geothermal lessee holds subsurface rights, while a solar developer needs the surface for panels, roads and transmission. BLM has framed the answer as cooperation between the two parties, and the burden of adjusting falls on the right-of-way applicant, not the lessee. Neither company has disclosed how it will handle the Nye County overlap.
Smaller than 2025 and well short of New Mexico
The 2025 Nevada sale raised about $9.4 million on roughly 280,000 acres, according to the BLM’s 2025 results sheet, so the 2026 auction earned less per acre as well as less in total. ThinkGeoEnergy counted 86 parcels and more than $9 million in bids at that earlier sale, against 60 parcels and $4.83 million now. By simple division that is about $34 an acre in 2025 against roughly $26 an acre now, while Ormat’s $2.3 million over 20,263 acres works out to about $113 an acre, well above the sale average. In June 2026 a New Mexico sale brought in $16.5 million, the second-highest-grossing sale in BLM history, a result covered in Utility Dive’s piece on a record-setting geothermal bid. A caption on Utility Dive’s photo dates the Nevada auction to Oct. 10, but the BLM’s notice and the report’s own wording both point to Oct. 20. Whether the leases that follow turn into drilled wells, or collide with NextEra’s solar plans, is still unsettled.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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