Here's another use for fracking: expanding access to hot rocks deep beneath Earth’s surface for energy production. In April Ormat Technologies hooked up the first such project—known in the lingo as an enhanced geothermal system, or EGS—to the nation's electric grid near Reno, Nev."The big prize is EGS," enthuses Douglas Hollett, director of the Geothermal Technologies Office at the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE). "The key is learning how to do it in a reliable way, in a responsible way."
By some estimates, the U.S. could tap as much as 2,000 times the nation’s current annual energy use of roughly 100 exajoules (an exajoule equals a quintillion, or 1018 joules) via enhanced geothermal technologies. With respect to electricity, the DoE concludes at least 500 gigawatts of electric capacity could be harvested from such EGS systems. Even better, hot rocks underlie every part of the country and the rest of the world. Australia's first enhanced geothermal system, spicily named Habanero, began producing power in May, and Europe has brought three such power plants online.
Showing posts with label geothermal energy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label geothermal energy. Show all posts
Friday, 2 August 2013
Scientific American has an article on the use of fracking to develop geothermal power projects - Fracking Could Help Geothermal Become a Power Player.
Thursday, 25 July 2013
The Christian Science Monitor has the second article by Robert Rapier in a series on this year's BP Statistical Review of Energy, this one looking at hydropower and geothermal power - Hydropower: the unsung hero of renewable energy. he also uses data from the latest REN21 Renewables Global Status Report. 
Hydropower accounts for more electricity production than solar PV, wind, and geothermal combined. In 2012, hydropower accounted for 16% of the world’s electricity production. However, hydropower gets far less press because it is a mature technology with a much lower annual growth rate than most renewables. While solar PV increased capacity by an average of 60% per year over the past 5 years, new hydropower capacity increased at a much more modest annual rate of 3.3%. ...Despite hydropower’s current dominant position among renewables, growth in consumption of hydroelectricity will likely continue to be modest, because many of the best sites for hydroelectric dams have already been developed. The exception to this is in the Asia Pacific region, where hydroelectric consumption more than doubled over the past decade. The region currently accounts for 35% of global hydroelectric consumption, and that percentage is likely to increase as countries continue to develop hydroelectric power plants. ...
In 2012, at least 78 countries used geothermal directly for energy. Over two-thirds of the geothermal energy for direct use was through geothermal heat pumps. 24 countries operated geothermal plants for electricity production. Total geothermal electricity capacity was 11.7 GW at the end of 2012. Capacity was led by the U.S. with 3.4 GW of capacity, followed by the Philippines at 1.9 GW, Indonesia at 1.3 GW, Mexico at 1.0 GW, and Italy at 0.9 GW. On a per capita basis, Iceland leads the world with 0.7 GW of capacity, which accounted for 30% of the country’s electricity in 2012.
Wednesday, 24 July 2013
The SMH reports that geothermal power company GeoDynamics (which has greatly disappointed me over the years) is still working hard to progress their plant at Innamicka in South Australia - Hot rocks power company seeking customers. 
Geodynamics, the developer of Australia’s first deep hot rocks energy project, aims to secure customers for its Cooper Basin site within six to 12 months, allowing it to proceed to a larger commercial plant, said chief executive Geoff Ward.The company has spent more than $400 million since listing in 2002, including buying equipment and drilling. Its 1-megawatt Habanero pilot plant was commissioned on April 30 and has been operating in excess of expectations since, said chief executive Geoff Ward. "We're delighted by how stable and reliable" the operation has been, he said.
The geothermal plant at Innamincka in north-eastern SA taps salty water heated at 210 degrees more than 4.2 kilometres below the surface, extracting the heat to generate electricity. The cooled brine is then pumped back down a separate well where it is reheated by the hot rocks, creating an energy loop. Only two other sites now operate so-called enhanced geothermal systems, at Soulz in France and Landau in Germany.
Geodynamics will only proceed with a 5-10 megawatt commercial plant if it can secure customers. Potential clients include Santos, which operates its own gas and oil hub at Moomba, about 70 kilometres away. Beach Energy and Chevron, meanwhile, are exploring for unconventional shale gas within 5-15 kilometres of Geodynamics's wells.
GeoDynamics' competitor Petratherm seems to be losing confidence in their proposed alternative project, with the company looking to explore for shale oil in Tasmania.
After years of trying to commercialise geothermal energy in the South Australian outback, ASX listed Petratherm announced plans to diversify into shale oil and gas in Tasmania. ''This decision by Petratherm to extend into unconventional shale oil and gas exploration leverages our core areas of expertise that include basin geology and deep drilling,'' the company said.Petratherm managing director Terry Kallis sought to reassure environmentally conscious investors that the company had not abandoned its geothermal project, which is planned to be about 75 per cent smaller than previous plans. But funding is hard to come by, and a $13 million government grant can be used only if Petratherm can raise millions of its own, a task that will be even more difficult under a lower carbon price.
Tuesday, 29 January 2013
ReNew Economy has a post on efforts by AltaRock to reduce the cost of enhanced geothermal power generation by shifting to a single well model - Geothermal plant cost potentially cut by 50%.
Geothermal developers from AltaRock Energy, a Washington state-based company, have been working on creating geothermal reservoirs with their own technology. They have recently made three such reservoirs from a single well, which means there is a greater chance a commercial geothermal plant can be built because with more reservoirs there is greater flow and energy output for each well. With human-made reservoirs expanding the energy output, the overall cost of constructing a geothermal plant could be reduced by 50 per cent.“The purpose of the Newberry EGS project is to demonstrate AltaRock’s tne technology designed to lower the cost of EGS, and thus allow economic extraction of heat from the earth in locations where high temperatures can be reached by conventional drilling techniques,” said Susan Petty, founder and president of AltaRock. (Source: Fort Mill Times)
These reservoirs are also called stimulated zones or enhanced geothermal systems, and located at the Newberry Enhanced Geothermal System (EGS) Demonstration site, which is near an ancient volcano in Oregon. They are created by injecting cold water into hot, low permeability rock to amplify fractures there, which then allows the surface hot water to leak out and fill the human-made reservoirs. (The Department of Energy has contributed over $20 million to their research.)
The potential costs savings results from the ability to create multiple hot water reservoirs from one well or single site. Alta Rock has made Thermally Degradable Zonal Isolation Materials (TZIM) to help create these multiple zones. A biodegradable polymer was used at the Newberry site in a process that was implemented several times. It is possible to do more than three stimulation rounds at one site for reservoir creation.
Wednesday, 4 July 2012
Business Green has a post on efforts to build geothermal heat and power plants in Britain - E.ON heats up plans for five deep-geothermal power plants. The FT also has a look at geothermal power - in their case looking at Kenya - Geothermal: Kenya pins its hopes on steam power.
The UK's nascent geothermal energy industry has today received a major boost after it emerged that one of the UK's largest energy companies is working on plans to develop five new deep geothermal heat and distribution systems.Ireland-based geothermal technology specialist GT Energy today revealed that it has inked a memorandum of understanding with energy giant E.ON that will see the two companies jointly develop a range of urban geothermal heat power plants.
The UK currently boasts only a handful of deep geothermal power plants, including a pioneering district heat system in Southampton that has been in place since 1986. However, a number of projects are currently under construction, including plans for a new geothermal power plant in Cornwall and a geothermal heat facility in the centre of Newcastle.
E.ON and GT Energy maintain that scientific studies have shown the UK has access to up to 100GW of geothermal energy potential, particularly in the South-West, North-West, and North-East.
They have also argued that deep-geothermal technology is well suited to urban settings where the resulting heat can be easily distributed to a variety of buildings in the area.
Wednesday, 28 March 2012
TPM has a post on an improved drilling bit for geothermal energy exploration - Navy to U.S.: Geothermal Drill Baby, Drill.
The U.S. Navy has teamed up with the Department of Energy’s Sandia National Laboratory to revive decades-old technology for a high performance drill bit, only they don’t have drilling for oil or gas in mind. The drill bit, called a polycrystalline diamond compact bit, is being retested evaluated and improved to help lower the cost of drilling for geothermal energy.
The mashup of the Navy with the development of high efficiency geothermal drilling technology is a natural one, given that the Navy has been investigating geothermal energy for decades, and the Navy’s Air Weapons Station China Lake research facility in California is the site of a major geothermal power plant that has been in operation for 15 years.
As a whole, in recent years the Department of Defense has ramped up its pursuit of geothermal energy and other forms of locally generated energy such as solar power, wind and biogas in order to unchain U.S. national defense facilities from reliance on grid-supplied sources.
Ironically, Sandia originally helped to develop polycrystalline diamond compact (PDC) technology about 30 years ago specifically to help the geothermal industry cut costs. However, given the industry’s small size at the time, there were relatively few opportunities to refine the technology in practice, so the oil and gas industry picked up the ball and ran with it.
PDC technology is based on a process called sintering, which involves fabricating objects from powders. According to Sandia’s press materials:“Polycrystalline diamond compact cutters on the cutting faces of bits allow more aggressive drilling than bits traditionally used for geothermal drilling. They are created by a sintering process. Graphite powder is applied to the leading face of a cutter made of tungsten carbide. The material assembly is compressed in three directions at pressures of 1 million pounds per square inch. When heated to a transition temperature, the graphite converts a to a 1-millimeter layer of synthetic diamond.”
Since oil and gas drilling generally takes place in sedimentary rock, which is relatively softer and cool, commercially available PDC bits still haven’t been fully tested and developed for geothermal drilling.
Geothermal drilling generally involves much more complicated conditions than found in oil and gas fields. Aside from involving higher temperatures and greater depths, geothermal drilling typically occurs in igneous and metamorphic rock, which is much harder and contains abrasive materials such as quartz. Fracturing in these formations also creates sudden changes in conditions that can damage the drill.
Saturday, 24 March 2012
Reuters has a report on interest in developing geothermal power stations in the Fukushima area - Japanese firms considering geothermal plants in Fukushima.
Japanese firms are looking at building several geothermal plants in a volcanic zone in the area worst hit by last year's nuclear disaster, a project that could gain momentum after the government eased restrictions on drilling this week.
The head of a group of firms that have studied the potential of a geothermal project in Fukushima said on Friday a consortium of about 10 companies would meet local people by early May to explain their plans to build plants with a total capacity of 270 megawatts, which would be Japan's biggest.
The consortium plans to work with local communities, including those who run hotels and inns at hot springs, to develop geothermal energy, Masaho Adachi, the chairman of Japan Geothermal Developers' Council said.
The council has already held a meeting with local government officials in the central zone of Fukushima, home to the nuclear plant crippled by an earthquake and tsumani last year, he said.
Along with high costs, protests by local communities fearful of the impact of a geothermal plant on hot springs have prevented such projects from taking off in the past.
"We should spend together a period of more than 10 years before having geothermal plants running," he said in an interview with Reuters on Friday, referring to activities such as collecting data, test drilling and environment assessment. Adachi declined to name the companies forming the consortium.
The Nikkei newspaper earlier said that the Fukushima project by a consortium of companies including Idemitsu Kosan Co and Inpex Corp would cost around 100 billion yen ($1.2 billion), with operations set to start in 2020.
Since the crisis, interest in renewable energy has jumped and a government subsidy scheme, similar to those in many countries in Europe, to force utilities to buy renewable electricity is due to start in July. ...
Studies show Japan, a land of volcanoes, ranks as the world's third-richest nation in geothermal power. A government study last year showed it has the potential for business to derive 14,000 MW of energy, but it currently has only 540 MW worth of commercial plants due to restrictions on development in national parks, where most resources lie.
Sunday, 18 March 2012
Recharge News has a report on a new geothermal power plant opening in southern California - EnergySource starts 50MW geothermal plant at Salton Sea.
A 49.9MW geothermal plant came on line this month, tapping heat from the Salton Sea field, a proven geothermal resource area that hasn't seen a new generator in more than two decades.
The developer, EnergySource, already has a power purchase agreement for a second plant in the southern California area.
"With this team and so much available capacity in this resource, we have a development pipeline of new geothermal projects for the coming decade that will help California and Southwestern utilities meet their state-mandated renewable energy requirements,” says chief executive Dave Watson.
The $400m Hudson Ranch 1, under construction since May 2010, draws on what EnergySource describes as "one of the largest and highest temperature geothermal resources in North America", with an "extremely permeable liquid dominated resource". Two of the plant's three production wells draw enough steam to generate more than 40MW each -- "among the largest producers in the world" -- while a third is capable of more than 15MW.
“The Salton Sea geothermal resource is robust, with 326MW in 10 existing projects currently operating at a capacity factor substantially greater than 90%, with a development potential of 1,400MW or more,” says Dr. Subir Sanyal of GeothermEx, a resource consultant for the project's financiers.
Tuesday, 24 January 2012
Forbes has an article on Warren Buffett's interest in geothermal power - Warren Buffett's Long Quest to Build A Geothermal Power Plant.
Here’s a sobering sign of the challenges facing the geothermal industry: Even Warren Buffett has spent the better part of a decade trying to build a single geothermal power plant in California.
MidAmerican Energy Holdings Company, which is controlled by Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, received the green light from state regulators back in 2003 for its 159-megawatt Black Rock project in the desert east of San Diego. But by 2008, MidAmerican’s CalEnergy subsidiary had yet to break ground on Black Rock as required by its license, and with the economy in free fall as the financial crisis took hold the California Energy Commission granted the company a three-year extension to begin construction.
With that deadline approaching last month, regulators gave CalEnergy another three-year extension after the company cited obstacles ranging from financing and securing a spot on the transmission system to a steam pipe shortage, according to commission records. CalEnergy now has until Dec. 18, 2014 to start putting steel into the ground.
“I’d love to see this industry develop faster,” Karen Douglas, a member of the California Energy Commission, said in something of an understatement at a geothermal industry roundtable discussion in San Francisco on Wednesday.
That’s not just a bureaucratic platitude. Douglas, the former chair of the energy commission, noted that existing geothermal plants currently provide 4.5% of California’s electricity and are crucial to meeting the state’s ambitious renewable energy targets, especially as aging nuclear power plants are mothballed in the years ahead as their licenses expire. ...
After all, geothermal plants, which tap reservoirs of underground hot water to create steam that drives electricity-generating turbines, use decades-old technology that produces power around the clock, unlike solar and wind. And given there’s a potential 7,000 to 8,000 megawatts of geothermal energy to be tapped in California, the opportunity would seem to be boundless.
The short answer is the geothermal industry looks a lot like the oil and gas business but without the outsized profits. There’s the same steep upfront costs of drilling for wells that may come up dry – geothermal prospectors can spend tens of millions on exploratory drilling. And while an oil well can put a petroleum company in the black as soon as the crude starts flowing, a geothermal developer won’t see a dime until a power plant is licensed, built and begins to generate electricity, a process that can take years as Buffett has discovered.
Thursday, 19 January 2012
The Boston Globe has an article on an enhanced geothermal power project in Oregon - Project to pour water into volcano to make power.
Adelaide Now has an update on some South Australian geothermal projects - Geothermal projects may make it in 2012.
Geothermal energy developers plan to pump 24 million gallons of water into the side of a dormant volcano in Central Oregon this summer to demonstrate new technology they hope will give a boost to a green energy sector that has yet to live up to its promise.
They hope the water comes back to the surface fast enough and hot enough to create cheap, clean electricity that isn’t dependent on sunny skies or stiff breezes — without shaking the earth and rattling the nerves of nearby residents.
Renewable energy has been held back by cheap natural gas, weak demand for power and waning political concern over global warming. Efforts to use the earth’s heat to generate power, known as geothermal energy, have been further hampered by technical problems and worries that tapping it can cause earthquakes.
Even so, the federal government, Google and other investors are interested enough to bet $43 million on the Oregon project. They are helping AltaRock Energy, Inc. of Seattle and Davenport Newberry Holdings LLC of Stamford, Conn., demonstrate whether the next level in geothermal power development can work on the flanks of Newberrry Volcano, located about 20 miles south of Bend, Ore.
“We know the heat is there,’’ said Susan Petty, president of AltaRock. “The big issue is can we circulate enough water through the system to make it economic.’’
Adelaide Now has an update on some South Australian geothermal projects - Geothermal projects may make it in 2012.
DELAYED geothermal projects could make it across the line this year as two SA-focused companies move further toward producing power, the industry association says. Geothermal company Geodynamics plans to drill its Habanero-4 well in the first financial quarter, taking it toward producing power to Innamincka.
Australian Geothermal Energy Association chief executive Susan Jeanes said "this is the year the industry can prove itself"'. She said the Geodynamics project, that suffered a major setback with a well blowout at Habanero 3 well in 2009, would also work toward fracturing rocks to achieve circulation of super hot water for its 1MW plant.
SA geothermal company Petratherm has drilled a deep well at its Paralana project north of the Flinders Ranges and completed a successful fracture. ...
Ms Jeanes was upbeat about the industry saying if the drilling work was successful this year it could help lead the whole sector forward. "We expect, that given (Geodynamics) successfully proved the concept with Habanero one and three that they will be successful with Habanero one and four because they are drilling into the same geological structure," she said. "That success at Innamincka will provide a huge boost of confidence in the sector, then the sector hopes that will be followed by a successful well at Paralana."
Petratherm managing director Terry Kallis said plans to begin drilling on a second deep well in the Paralana project were still on track for later this year despite TRUenergy's exit. "We haven't changed our plans. we're still on track to look to drill later this year," Mr Kallis said.
Sunday, 11 December 2011
CleanTechnica has a post on Ethiopia's plans to harness large scale wind and geothermal power - Africa at the Energy Crossroads: Ethiopia Launches 6 Wind, 1 Geothermal Power Project.
Adelaide Now has an update on Petratherm's geothermal project at Paralana - Hot rocks leader plans third well.
The SMH has a report on geothermal power project planned for Victoria - Geothermal plant wins state backing.
Ethiopia isn’t a country that comes up often when discussing renewable energy, but the Ethiopian Electric Power Coroporation (EEPCO) this past week announced it’s starting construction of six wind power projects and one geothermal power plant. In total, electricity generation capacity for the renewable energy projects totals more than one gigawatt (1 GW), Ethtiopian news service NewsDire reported.
The renewable energy projects are part of EEPCO’s plans to increase national electricity generation capacity five times by 2015, from a current 2000 megawatts (MW) to about 10,000 MW. Increasing electricity generation, in turn, is key to the government’s broader economic development plans.
Ethiopia’s considers itself a “powerhouse of Africa.” Comprising three climate zones, it ranks second in Africa in terms of hydropower potential, after the Democratic Republic of Congo, and exports significant amounts of electricity to its East African neighbors. Ethiopia’s Water and Energy Minister in March announced a plan to add 5,250 MW of electricity generating capacity by building the Grand Millennium Dam of Ethiopia, which would dam the Nile River near the border with Sudan.
EEPCO views wind power as a clean energy complement to its hydropower generating capacity. Ethiopia has substantial wind power resources. Wind power potential in the East African country totals some 10,000 MW, EEPCO has estimated, which has noted that wind energy is higher in the dry season, when hydropower resources are at their lowest.
The six wind power projects announced this past week include the 300 MW Aysha Wind Farm near the Djibouti border, the 100 MW Debre Birhan Wind Farm north of Addis Ababa, the 100 MW Assela Wind Power Project southeast of the capital, and the 153 MW Adama II Wind Power Project. Also slated to start construction are the 250 MW Galema I Wind Power project 42 MW Mesebo Harena Wind Farm and the 42 MW Mesebo Harena Wind Farm.
Ethiopia’s electric utility also intends to start construction of the 70 MW Aluto Langano Geo Thermal project. Rich in geothermal resources, the East African Rift Zone runs through eastern Ethiopia, though the country has thus far been much less active in exploiting it than has neighboring Kenya, which in September announced its intention to generate 30% of its electricity needs from geothermal resources by 2030.
Adelaide Now has an update on Petratherm's geothermal project at Paralana - Hot rocks leader plans third well.
PETRATHERM wants to differentiate itself from other geothermal explorers as it moves toward becoming a working electricity supplier.
Announcing an upgraded resource statement for the flagship Paralana project, Petratherm managing director Terry Kallis said yesterday the company had the right projects, partners and people to deliver results soonest.
After tests, Paralana's potential has been independently assessed, recording an inaugural "measured" resource and with almost half of the total 38,000 petajoules resource moving into the higher confidence "indicated" bracket from the "inferred" category.
The upgrade was a major step forward for Petratherm and partners Beach Energy and TRUenergy, Mr Kallis said.
"It is estimated we have enough geothermal resource potential for about 1300 megawatts of power generation for 30 years, which equates to more than one-third of South Australia's power use," he said.
The SMH has a report on geothermal power project planned for Victoria - Geothermal plant wins state backing.
A GEOTHERMAL energy project near Geelong has landed a $25 million state government grant to help develop a 12-megawatt pilot power plant. Greenearth Energy, which secured the money yesterday, says its plans for the demonstration plant could power up to 8000 homes.
The grant follows two years of negotiations with both Labor and Coalition governments to secure the funds under the state's Energy Technology Innovation Strategy, first promised in 2009. The first $5 million will go towards drilling a four-kilometre deep well to test the geothermal resource at one of the company's exploration sites. Greenearth holds exploration licences for Gherang, Wensleydale and Anglesea, and a preferred site will be announced in three months.
Thursday, 8 December 2011
Giles Parkinson at The Climate Spectator has a look at geothermal energy company Petratherm’s proposal for a renewable energy complex to power BHP’s Olympic Dam mine (the world’s largest if / when the expansion project is completed) - Cheap and green energy for miners.
It may seem somewhat audacious for a company with a market value of $16 million to propose a world-leading energy project nearly one hundred times its value. But, says Petratherm managing director Terry Kallis, if you don’t dream, you don’t get. And he just happens to think he’s sitting on a unique opportunity.
Kallis, on Wednesday, outlined his vision for a $1.5 billion clean energy precinct in the outback of South Australia that would take advantage of the unique combination of geothermal, solar and wind energy resources, the intersection of major gas pipelines, and the proximity of the world’s largest mine and other major developments.
The big opportunity is, of course, to service the massive energy demands of BHP Billiton’s proposed Olympic Dam expansion – which could be more than 700MW at that site alone – as well as other mine proposals or expansions such as Prominent Hill and Carrapateena. Mine managers do not normally think along the lines that Kallis has proposed – they will simply build a new transmission line if a connection is close enough, or build enough gas or diesel to ensure the operations keep going 24/7.
However, BHP Billiton have shown that they are willing to consider all options. As we reported in May, the world’s biggest mining company is effectively hedging its bets around the supply of energy and, after conducting a detailed analysis, is willing to concede that geothermal and solar power have the potential to offer the cheapest form of emissions reductions by the end of the decade, if not earlier, and the cheapest form of energy.
Kallis’ idea is to show BHP the path to get there, and to keep their options open as long as possible, so that they can take advantage of the opportunities when the new technologies are bankable, and can deliver at the costs anticipated. Kallis, of course, has great interest in this, because his company proposes to supply the geothermal energy – and Olympic Dam is too good an opportunity to let slide. "We want to make sure we don’t lose the opportunity to get geothermal into that market," he says.
Kallis proposes to create a clean energy precinct on the Moolawatana cattle station around 50km north of Petratherm’s Paralana geothermal prospect, and just over 200km from Olympic Dam. The plan calls for an initial 300MW of capacity – mostly gas sourcing fuel from the passing Moomba-Adelaide gas pipeline, and wind – and have that ready by 2016, around the time Olympic Dam would need it. The wind resource is not officially documented, but the cattle station’s name comes from the local indigenous word for “windy place", so Kallis expects that should not be a problem.
The idea is then to add another 300MW or so of geothermal and solar energy as those technologies mature by the end of the decade, and around the time Olympic Dam would be contemplating its next stage of expansion. The mixture of those four energy sources should provide the miner with the confidence of a secure supply. Kallis says they will be able to deliver attractive hybrid products that lower electricity costs and improve reliability, while also reducing carbon emissions.
Kallis has aligned himself with some unnamed parties – presumably gas, transmission and technology people – and plans to open formal talks with BHP with the view to obtaining a power purchase agreement. Failing that, they will talk to the local utility. Petratherm is, of course, in no position to fund this project, but as it has done by bringing in TruEnergy and Beach Petroleum to partner in its geothermal development, Kallis anticipates there will be no shortage of potential partners.
Of course, Kallis is not the only one to dream of creating a new energy precinct based around the needs of a large mining operation. The so-called “green grid" proposal to unlock huge wind resources in South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula is still awaiting the opportunity to proceed and will rely mostly on an upgraded connection to the eastern seaboard and the Copperstring project in Queensland, a project that was noisily supported by local member Bob Katter and hoped to link Townsville and Mt Isa and open up a string of renewable energy plays in wind, solar and biomass along the way.
However, such was the length of the transmission line that the fate of Cooperstring rested on the support of a single end user in Mt Isa, in this case Xstrata. Despite support from the Queensland state government, the Swiss-based Xstrata board plumped for the easy, not necessarily cheaper, option of a gas fired power station, and Copperstring is now dead. BHP, at least, is alert to the options, and as the country's biggest company with the world's biggest mine, would be aware of strong signal it would send to the broader economy.
Sunday, 4 December 2011
The Star reports that a geothermal power plant is to be built in Malaysia - Geothermal power plant soon.
The country's first environmental-friendly geother- mal power generation plant will begin operating in Tawau in three years.
The 30mW plant costing some RM400mil would be built and operated by Sabah-based Tawau Green Energy Sdn Bhd (TGE) with the electricity being channelled to the Sabah Electricity Sdn Bhd (SESB) power grid.
State Tourism, Culture and Environment Minister Datuk Masidi Manjun witnessed the signing of a 21-year renewable energy power purchase agreement between TGE and SESB yesterday.
TGE project director Andrew Amaladoss said the geothermal plant would be built on a 20ha site about 20km from Tawau town and adjacent to the Tawau Hills Park.
Amaladoss said TGE would tap geothermal energy by drilling 12 wells to a depth of between 1.8km and 2km.
Wednesday, 23 November 2011
Forbes has a post on some of Hot Dry Rocks' marketing for Australian geothermal energy - Australia Could Be A Geothermal Powerhouse.
The Canberra Times has a similar post focusing on potential in the ACT - Thermal might one day power the capital.
The Climate Spectator has a rather more detailed take on the story - Can geothermal cut it in Australia?.
Last week, geothermal consulting company Hot Dry Rocks released a geothermal map of Australia that shows the country’s incredible potential for tapping its geothermal energy supplies. The map, which was developed in conjunction with Google.org, shows that if Australia were to only use 2% of its geothermal potential using today’s technology, it could produce 395,092 MW – about ten times more than Australia’s total coal and gas production.
One of a major benefits for using geothermal energy in Australia is that, as you can see from the map above, it’s generally available everywhere. Australia has some of the highest temperatures in its known near-surface rocks anywhere in the world and its geothermal potential is distributed over the entire country.
“This is clean, renewable energy that is realistically accessible today with existing drilling and power conversion technologies,” HDR’s Managing Director Graeme Beardsmore said. “Not only that, EGS has the potential to provide base load power; it is one of the most abundant sources of renewable energy available and is more than sufficient to replace current coal and gas power supply.”
The Canberra Times has a similar post focusing on potential in the ACT - Thermal might one day power the capital.
The ACT could one day generate its own power with up to 430 megawatts of renewable geothermal energy, according to new data issued today.
Australian geothermal energy consultancy Hot Dry Rocks has released figures showing that the rocks up to 5km beneath Australia's surface store enough heat to theoretically provide 85 million megawatts, equivalent to the country's current energy needs for the next 50,000 years.
In the ACT, 430 megawatts could be produced by extracting 20 per cent of the estimated heat energy over the next 30 years.
The Climate Spectator has a rather more detailed take on the story - Can geothermal cut it in Australia?.
In the geothermal industry, they are fond of painting the big picture. For years, the selling point of the technology was that if just 1 per cent of the superheated rocks that lay deep under the surface in Australia could be exploited, then it could power the country for 26,000 years.
That estimate was based on the assumption that the industry could extract every last drop of heat, which of course would never happen. It’s like solar’s claim that the sun could power Australia’s needs 10,000 times over if all its radiation could be harnessed, or coal that it could continue to power the world for another 250 years. It’s either technically not feasible, or not particularly desirable.
The latest geothermal industry estimates – a collaboration between consulting group Hot Dry Rocks and Google – try to inject a little more reality to the forecasts, but it is still comes up with a considerable number: if just 2 per cent of Australia’s technically-accessible hot dry rock potential is tapped, this would generate capacity of 395,092 MW of clean, emissions-free, renewable electricity, or almost 10 times that of the current capacity of carbon-emitting coal and gas.
That still sounds like it is more than enough, but can it be achieved? Governments have set great store by it. In some policy scenarios, geothermal makes up 20 per cent of Australia’s capacity by 2050, and the US has predicted it meeting 5 per cent of its needs. While numbers and estimates flow freely from the geothermal industry, they are yet to convince investors that its heat can too. As one executive described it, geothermal like a mis-firing sporting team, it has managed to gather the required elements without finding a way of putting them together. How it does that is one of the focal points of the industry’s annual conference in Melbourne this week.
You wouldn't know it from the languishing share prices of Australian geothermal aspirants – which has turned all but a notable few into the status of penny dreadfuls – but the global geothermal industry has been experiencing something of a boom these past five years. Its global capacity has grown to 10,500MW, and it expects this to occur again in the next five years. (Australia’s capacity is less than 0.5MW).
But while conventional hydrothermal projects in volcanic regions account for three quarters of these developments, there are no new volcanoes and hot springs to discover. The industry’s future growth lies in its ability to push the technology frontier on what are known as “enhanced geothermal systems” or EGS, hot rocks that lie deeper beneath the earth and which need considerable more encouragement to release their energy towards the earths’ surface than a New Zealand geyser.
Australia has been at the forefront of this experimental technology in the past five years, but according to Graeme Beardsmore, the head of Hot Dry Rocks, the setbacks experienced by Geodynamics with the blow-out of its Habanero well, and assorted delays elsewhere, may have pushed the industry back by three years.
“It’s frustrating that we haven’t yet managed to produce power in Australia,” Beardsmore says. And he says that the doubters will not be silenced until the first electrons have been produced. The problem is, where Australia was once at the cutting edge, the setbacks and the inability to tap government funds and attract private capital means Australia is at risk of falling behind Germany, China, or even Japan and South Korea. “We’re starting to lag behind a bit. It’s very hard to prove these things until we get investment, and it’s hard to get investment until we can prove them.”
Terry Kallis, the head of Petratherm, one of the most advanced of the geothermal aspirants, and a former chairman of the Australian Geothermal Association, agrees that the industry is caught in a Catch-22 situation. “We need to show results,” he said. Petratherm, along with Geodynamics, is nearest of all, and both hope to be producing electrons from pilot projects within 18 months. But the industry needs more than just these two projects to prove its worth.
The problem is, the industry needs finance to fund expensive drilling programs. The government’s initial funding measures have proved poorly designed, although this is now being addressed through the newly constructed Emerging Renewables Fund, and a redesign of other schemes, and could also be helped through the proposed Clean Energy Finance Corporation. Energy Minister Martin Ferguson is showing interest, and hosted senior delegates at a luncheon in Melbourne yesterday. But Kallis says the industry also needs bipartisan support for measures such as the carbon price and the CEFC, and large energy groups also need to become more engaged. ...
The HDR-Google collaboration shows that although most geothermal drilling and development is taking place in South Australia, the largest heat resources for EGS lie in Queensland and the Northern Territory.
Working on its formula of extracting 2 per cent of resources of up to 300°C available at depths higher than 5000 metres, the study estimates there is 136,759MW of potential capacity in Queensland and 83,104MW in the territory. This compares to 58,541MW in SA, 55,133MW in NSW, 46,080 in WA, 12,411MW in Victoria, and 43MW in the ACT. Tasmania has an estimated 3,021MW of capacity.
Saturday, 29 October 2011
Google Earth has announced an improved data set for geothermal energy in the US, also pointing to this article in Forbes - Enhanced Geothermal Systems in Google Earth.
Back in 2008, Frank wrote about how Google.org was using Google Earth to visualize Geothermal Data in the United States.
Google has continued to increase the amount of data behind the map, making it a more and more powerful tool as times goes on. ...
To see this data for yourself in Google Earth, simply load this KMZ file (which was last updated just a few days ago). Also worth your time is this short article in Forbes that talks a bit more about how EGS could benefit all of us.
Wednesday, 12 October 2011
Renewable Energy World has an article on an expansion to a geothermal power plant in Iceland - 90 MW Addition to Iceland's Hellisheidi Geothermal Power Plant.
With the fifth phase of development complete, Iceland's Hellisheidi geothermal power plant is now one of the largest in the world.
On October 1st 2011, Reykjavik’s utility company, Orkuveita Reykjavikur, celebrated the start-up of the 5th phase of the Hellisheidi geothermal combined heat and power plant (CHP), located just outside Reykjavik, Iceland. This fifth phase added an additional 90 MW of power. The plant, which was designed by a group of consulting firms led by Mannvit, is now one of the world’s largest geothermal energy plants, producing 303 MW of power and 133 MW of thermal energy for space heating and hot water.
Mannvit, as the mechanical and overall plant designer, is proud to report on the successful commissioning of the plant’s 5th phase, which added 2 x 45 MWe Mitsubishi turbines. The total cost of the 90 MW, 5th phase was approximately $197 million, or 23.5 billion ISK (Icelandic krona).
The North Bay Business Journal reports that the world's largest geothermal power plant will expanded by 98 MW - Calpine plans $700 million Geysers expansion.
Calpine Corporation, the nation’s largest renewable geothermal power producer, plans to build two new power plants adjacent to its existing Geysers steam field in Sonoma and Lake Counties designed to generate a total of 98 megawatts of additional clean energy, pending regulatory approvals. ...
The Geothermal Operator Corporation (GOC) and the Central California Power Association (CCPA) previously developed this site. These firms built their first plant in 1989 with a capacity of 135 megawatts. Due to a sharp decline in natural steam conditions, the plant was decommissioned and steam wells were plugged and abandoned in 1990.
Over the past 10 years, Calpine has been injecting up to 20 million gallons of reclaimed wastewater per day from Santa Rosa and Lake County into the underground steam reservoir to produce additional steam and manage the entire field as a whole. This injection process is what makes it possible to revisit abandoned well sites and bring them back online. ...
The Geysers is the single largest geothermal operation in the world, producing up to 725 megawatts of green energy around the clock — enough electricity to power the entire city of San Francisco.
Today this 45-square mile steam field, with its 330 steam wells and 75 injection wells, represents 41 percent of overall geothermal generation in the U.S.
Thursday, 29 September 2011
The Climate Spectator has a brief report on the Fukushima disaster driven resurgence of interest in geothermal power in Japan - Japan northeast could tap 740MW of geothermal power.
Japan's northeast Tohoku region could develop 740 megawatts of new geothermal power supplies, the Japan Geothermal Developers' Council estimated on Thursday.
The Tohoku region has been trying to rebuild following a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami on March 11, with some local governments showing willingness to invest in renewable energy following the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
Studies show Japan, a land of volcanoes, ranks as the world's third richest nation in geothermal power, with the potential to derive 23,400 MW of energy.
Sunday, 18 September 2011
Cleantechnica has a post on a recent report on geothermal power in Canada - Forget Tar Sands: Canada’s Geothermal Resources >1 Million Times Electricity Consumption.
Canada’s sitting on “massive” geothermal resources, according to news reports, more than 1 million times its current electricity consumption. “As few as 100 projects could meet Canada’s energy needs,” notes the Geological Survey of Canada research team whose 322-page report will be presented at a geothermal industry conference in Toronto Thursday, Sept. 15.
Better yet, the 12-scientist team found that geothermal heat reservoirs found across “large swaths of British Columbia, Alberta, the Yukon and Northwest Territories” lie close to the surface, making them easier to reach and tap into.
The research team estimates that there are at least 5 gigawatts (GW) of geothermal power available in British Columbia, Alberta and the Yukon alone. British Columbia has so much that it could produce as much electricity as the controversial $7.9-billion, 1,100 megawatt Site C hydroelectric dam the provincial government has proposed, according to the research team’s findings.
While the geothermal resources in these areas hold the greatest potential to be developed commercially, such opportunities exist across the country, the researchers say.
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