Sometime in September 2012, I was able to visit the Ormat geothermal power plant at their steam boat facility in Reno, NV with a team of professionals from the Eastern Nevada Chapter of AWMA (Air and Waste management Association). During the tour we were shown around the facility and we had the opportunity to see some of the cutting edge technologies they use in Geothermal Power generation. Ormat technology, a Nevada based company founded in 1965 committed to developing green, sustainable energy solution through the development of pioneering technology.
On the 12th of April 2013, the US department of energy announced that Ormat Technologies has developed the nation’s first commercial enhanced geothermal system (EGS) project to supply electricity to the grid. At its Churchill County facility, Ormat Technologies’ Desert Peak 2 EGS project had increased power output of its nearby operating geothermal field by nearly 38 percent – providing an additional 1.7 megawatts of power to the grid and validating this emerging clean energy technology.
The technological concept for the EGS system can be found at the Department of energy website with a detailed animation of the process. In summary, the concept behind the EGS technology is to extract heat by creating a subsurface fracture system to which water can be added through injection wells. Creating an enhanced or engineered, geothermal system requires improving the natural permeability of rock. Rocks are permeable due to minute fractures and pore spaces between mineral grains. Injected water is heated by contact with the rock and returns to the surface through production wells, as in naturally occurring hydrothermal systems. EGS are reservoirs created to improve the economics of resources without adequate water and/or permeability.
I believe this is a good indication that with proper investment in research and development, renewable energy can thump fossil fuel as sustainable means of energy production. In line with president Obama’s climate change policy, technologies like this will definitely reduce GHGs and hence positively affect climate change. Although there are still some reservations from critics about geothermal technology because of its potential ground water contamination, but I believe that any contamination will be significantly lower than those of gas fracking which is the major source of power generation.
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Daniel
Daniel Adesina 