Wednesday, 30 March
Reading the IEA Generation Cost Study
The IEA released the 2010 Edition of the Electricity Generation Cost study: "Projected Costs of Generating Electricity". There is interesting information in the Report. One thing of particular interest is the comparison between countries in terms if the generation mix and the prices. Thanks to the availability of low-price high-quality coal, Australia remains a low-cost-generating country.
In terms of projections for the future, the study has to make number of assumptions. In contrast to the earlier issues in this series, this time the IEA included the cost of carbon in the projected costs. To do that, they had to make assumptions about the penalties associated with carbon emissions and the cost of implementing carbon capture technologies. A carbon price of 30 USD per tonne of CO2 is assumed to be a likely impost for plants being commissioned in 2015. Carbon capture costs are baded on what is provided from the participating countries. Only carbon capture at plant level [CC(S)] is considered. The study uses unproven estimates on transport and storage to assume that they might add another USD 10-15 per MWh. Typically, carbon emissions are around 100 tCO2/TJ for hard coal and 50 tCO2/TJ for gas. With standard electric conversion factors of 40% and 55%, this amounts to emissions of 0.9 tCO2/MWh for electricity from hard coal and of 0.33 tCO2/MWh for electricity from gas-fired power generation. So the inclusion of the carbon cost makes a significant difference.
In this blog, I try to take down some notes while reading the Report. The following is not a comprehensive summary and those interested can purchase a copy of the report from the IEA web site.
Capital investment costs
The following table summarises the overnight construction costs for different generation technologies considered in the study. The overnight construction cost does not consider the discount rate during the time of construction. This has been included in the study while calculating the levelised costs.
| Type of Plant |
Overnight construction costs |
| Coal without carbon capture |
900-2800 USD/kWe |
Coal with carbon capture at the plant but excluding the cost of CO2 transport and storage
(the report panel believes that CO2 transport and storage might add another USD 10-15 per MWh) |
3223-6268 USD/kWe |
| Gas without carbon capture |
520-1800 USD/kWe |
| Nuclear |
1600-5900 USD/kWe |
| Onshore wind |
1900-3700 USD/kWe |
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The geothermal cost input to the study varied in submissions from different countries. Well-drilling makes up a large share of the overnight costs of geothermal electricity generation, sometimes accounting for as much as one-third to one-half of the total cost of a geothermal project. Capital costs are site-specific, varying significantly with the characteristics of the local resource system and reservoir. The overnight construction costs vary from 1 752 USD/kWe in the United States (for a 50 MWe project) to 12 887 USD/kWe in the Czech Republic (5 MWe). In the Australian submission (which was made by ESAA), the reported figure of 4 095 USD/kWe (500 MWe) is said to be on the lower end of construction costs that can exceed 6700 USD/kWe.
Levelised electricity costs
In calculating the levelised costs, one also needs to make an assumption on the cost of the fuel, the plant life, the capacity factor, and the decommissioning costs if any. The study assumed a capacity factor of 85% for nuclear, coal and gas plants. This assumption is believed to be the upper limit of what is technically feasible for these technologies.
Government policies and subsidies are not included in the costing.
The Fuel Cost
The study used the price assumptions provided by the IEA Office of the Chief Economist:
| Hard Coal |
USD90/tonne(USD3.60/GJ) |
| Brown Coal |
Different for different countries |
| Natural Gas |
USD9.76/GJ in OECD Europe
USD11.09/GJ in OECD Asia |
For three OECD countries (Australia, USA and Mexico) and the four non-OECD countries included in the study, instead of the above table, the specific national coal and gas prices were used as shown in the following table (the units are as above):
| Country |
Hard Coal Price, USD/GJ
|
Gas Price, USD/GJ
|
| Australia |
26.65(1.25)
|
7.58
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| Mexico |
87.50(3.32)
|
7.5
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| USA |
47.60(2.12)
|
7.4
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| Brazil |
33.09(1.85)
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7.71
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| China |
86.34(2.95)
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4.53
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| Russia |
78.00(2.66)
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5.97
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| South Africa |
14.63(0.82)
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For nuclear power plants, the following costs were used: (a) USD1.94/GJ for the front-end nuclear fuel cycle; and (b) USD0.65/GJ for waste fuel processing and storage/disposal.
Carbon Price
A carbon price of USD30 per tonne of CO2 was used for the OECD countries; no carbon price was used for the non-OECD countries.
Plant Life
The expected life was different for different technologies as shown in the following table:
| Wave and Tidal |
20 |
| Wind and Solar |
25 |
| Gas |
30 |
| Coal |
40 |
| Geothermal |
40 |
| Nuclear |
60 |
| Hydro |
80 |
Decommissioning costs and Residual Value
Where no country data were submitted, the following was used for decommissioning costs: 15% of the construction costs for nuclear; and 5% of the construction costs for other technologies.
Construction period
The default assumptions were 1 year for non-hydro renewables; 2 years for gas; 4 years for coal; and 7 years for nuclear power plants. There was no specific mention for geothermal in this section but the country submissions may have included the data for geothermal plants so that default assumptions would not be used in the case of geothermal.
RESULTS
The levelised costs of electricity are calculated based on the above assumptions and they are presented in the Report for two discount rate scenarios: 5% and 10%. The technologies with a higher capital cost (e.g. nuclear)suffer as the discount rate is increased. The following two figures displays the regional levelised costs for nuclear, coal, gas and onshore wind plants.
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Regional ranges of LCOE for nuclear, coal, gas and onshore wind power plants (at 5% discount rate)
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Regional ranges of LCOE for nuclear, coal, gas and onshore wind power plants (at 10% discount rate)
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The above graphs do not include renewables other than wind neither it does include the projected costs for geothermal. These are included in a very detailed submission by the ESAA on behalf of the Australien electricity generation industry.
In the ESAA submission the cheapest source of electricity when the carbon costs are included is geothermal energy.
Tuesday, 30 March
Earth Wind and Fire
Interest in Indonesian geothermal sector is hotting up. Yesterday, I mentioned Tata Power and Origin Energy. Today, I saw a press release by Chevron that it too is bidding for a geothermal power project proposed for North Sumatra, Indonesia at Sorik Merapi. The Sorik Merapi project will have an initial generating capacity of 55 MWe, augmentable to 200 MWe as demand grows. Indonesia, which is within the extremely active seismic region called the Pacific Ring of Fire, is said to have a geothermal power-generating potential of about 27,000 megawatts, but the current installed geothermal capacity is only about 1200 MWe. While Tata, Origin, and Chevron are expressing interest in North Sumatra, Raser Technologies announced yesterday that the United States Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) awarded Indonesia Power (IP) grant funding in the amount of $934,308 for a feasibility study of the Tangkuban Perahu geothermal concession and IP has selected Raser as the sole-source contractor to perform the study. he grant will cover approximately 70% of the study, with Raser, as sole-source contractor, contributing a cost share of approximately $400,000. This is targeting Raser and IP concessions amounting to 100,000 acres surrounding the Tangkuban Perahu volcano, approximately 15 miles north of Bandung, the capital of the West Java Province. The following images shows the crater of Tangkuban Parahu. The area is a popular touristic destination.
While these things are happening in Java and Sumatra, A Brisbane-based company Earth Solar Power will be exploring an area north of Shepparton, Victoria, with initial drilling to be conducted to a depth of 500 m. The exploration manager and company director Howard Bassingthwaighte is expecting the initial work around Shepparton to entail shallow and slim holes being drilled before a temperature probe was lowered into the ground.
The company week received a $60 000 Victorian Government grant in January for the Shepparton drilling operation. Mr Bassingthwaighte said the grant required the company to begin work within 12 months. "So sometime this year we will drill at least one hole, and we are looking at drilling two depending on the drilling companies," Mr Bassingthwaighte said. He also said that the company was exploring areas in Queensland as well but its main focus was on Victoria. The following image shows Victorian Onshore Permit Documents(3/3/2010) by Earth Solar Power
Monday, 29 March
IEA Report concludes that Geothermal Energy is the cheapest zero-emission option for Australia and USA
A very interesting study was released last week by the International Energy Agency: "Projected Costs of Generating Electricity: 2010". The study covers the costs of producing electricity from different sources in arange of countries. Coal is economically competitive in the absence of a sufficiently high carbon price. This is not a surprise but things start getting interested when the effect of possible carbon pricing is taken into account. In many Western nations, nuclear power turns out ot be the cheapest zero-emission option, i.e. most Western countries except Australia. For Australia and the United States, geothermal energy offers the cheapest source of future electricity, at least at the power station gate(not including the costs of transmission). An interesting conclusion is that even with a carbon charge of $US30 ($A33) a tonne, the study reckons it will be cheaper for Australian generators to burn black coal, send the emissions into the atmosphere and pay the charge rather than to turn to gas or other low-emission alternatives.
In other news on geothermal energy development, Vikas Srivastav reports on Financial Chronicle web site that Tata Power is planning to substantially increase its geothermal energy through its investments in Indonesia, Australia and at home in India. Indonesia announced a geothermal target of 9500 MWe by 2025 and Tata Power wants to be part of this expansion. The estimated costs for the Indonesian projects are reported to be $2m-$3m per MWe, with the levelised electricity costs at "Rs 4-4.5 per unit, which is lower than Rs 17 for solar power, but higher than wind" (Mr Srivastav reported these cost projections in Indonesian money units I cannot convert these to Australian dollars because Indonesian money references are too complicated for me). It had been announced earlier (in an e-mailed statement by Origin Energy)that the Tata would collaborate with Origin Energy in trying to enter the Indonesian geothermal power sector. Readers of this blog would know that Tata is already partnering with Origin in Geodynamics and the Innamincka Deeps venture.
Kenya is buying two drilling rigs for US$36 million and wants to acquire five more to speed up exploration for steam fields that will be used to generate geothermal energy, Energy Minister Kiraitu Murungi said. "It costs $6.3 million to sink a single well", he said "and 26 steam wells have been drilled in the East African nation since geothermal work began in 1996". Kenya is planning to expand geothermal power plants in Olkaria, 60 kilometers (37 miles) northwest of Nairobi, over the next two years, at cost of about $1.4 billion, with the capacity to generate 280 megawatts of electricity. The country currently exploits about 167 megawatts of its geothermal potential of 7,000 megawatts but has plans to boost its geothermal generation capacity by 4,000 megawatts over the next 20 years.
Greenpower Energy is starting its preliminary exploration on the GEP37 and GEP38 exploration poermits near Esperance in Western Australia. The permits have a combined area of 10732 sq km, they are for a period of 6 years, are renewable and enable the holder to proceed to commercial development. The company is expecting to find a geothermal resource heated by radiogenic granites. The Esperance Express estimates the cost of exploration as $42.9 million. As far as I can understand, the company is analysing past drilling data at the moment. Some shallow holes may be drilled this year and next year. Deeper drilling down to 5000 m is planned for 2012. Greenpower Energy is primarily a coal and coal-seam-gas company listed on ASX in 2008.
The Kuth Managing Director, David McDonald, was on Radio Australia News encouraging the PNG government to consider using geothermal energy to provide for the increasing electricity demand from the country's mining sector. "I think the real benefit that exists for PNG longer term is that much of your mining is driven by diesel generation and that's an extremely expensive cost for that industry to develop," David McDonald said. "So it's going to need a much lower cost base load supply, and frankly geothermal is one of the answers to that."
Friday, 26 March
AGEG TIG6 Wiki and the AGEC 2010
AGEG Technical interest Group 6 (TIG6) has now its own wiki. I am hoping this will help the communication within the TIG6. The wiki is visible to the general public. However, to have editing rights, that is to have the right to post items in the wiki, one has to be a TIG6 member. How do you become a member? Click on the AGEG TIG6 home page and use the link on that page to apply to become a member. Membership is free.
TIG6 membership will not automatically give you editing access to the TIG6. You will have to e-mail to me to get that access. I do not know how to do it automatically so this extra step is necessary.
What is a wiki?
Wikis have been around for over 10 years. I am sure you have all used wikipedia. Wiki gives a tool to collaboratively edit a document. In that sense, they are excellent to share information in a team. A wiki is not a bulletin board. It is not a chat tool for conversation between parties. The main objective of the wiki is to produce a document that has information shared by the entire team.
How do you access it?
It is is easy. Just click on http://www.mech.uq.edu.au/qgece/agegwiki We start the TIG6 with a minimum structure. I have three headings:
- Glossary
- Power Plant Tutorial
- Questions (for the general public and the TIG6 community to post questions and to find answers)
I understand wikis have a way of evolving autonomously. I hope this will happen to the TIg6 wiki.
Australian Geothermal Energy Conference 2010
The Call for Papers for the 2010 Australian Geothermal Energy Conference (AGEC) is now out. The Conference will be held from the 16th -19th November 2010 at the Adelaide Convention Centre. As you know this is the industry's premier event and you are reasing this blog you are invited and encouraged to attend and participate. If you want to make a presentation at the Conferencre, you need to submit an Abstract by 12 June 2010. Last year's conference attracted over 400 delegates. the Organising Committee is hoping to do beter this year. As in the past years, the registration will be low cost (less than $1,000/per person for a three day event) and will include a geothermal trade show, unique to this event. A number of short courses will be conducted on 16th November, and the Conference and Trade Show will be held from 17 - 19 November.
For more information, please see the Australian Geothermal Energy Conference website: www.ausgeothermal.com and remember to mark the days on your diary to attend.
Friday, 19 March
Stakeholders Workshop Update
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On 17 March 2010, the Queensland Geothermal Energy Centre of Excellence (QGECE) held its first Stakeholders Workshop.
Some people might say it is about time as the Centre has been operational for 14 months.
The purpose of the Workshop was to present the Centre Research Program to the industry and other stakeholders; to demonstrate how the Centre planned to add value to the development of the industry; and to form a basis for gaining industry feedback and bridging the gap between industry needs and our activities. The Workshop was facilitated by Stephen Hinchliffe (SKM).
I thank David Kumar Thambar, Director, from the Office of Clean Energy, for providig me with the pictures that you see on this page.
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In terms of attendance, if I may say so, the Workshop was a success. Of the 73 registrations, all bar 3 showed up on the day. The spread was also very good, with a good cross-section of the sector represented at the Workshop including
- the geothermal industry (18 delegates from 11 companies);
- industry associations(3 delegates from AGEA and Queensland Resources Council);
- service/consulting companies(13 delegates from 7 companies);
- research/academic community(31 delegates from UQ, Grifitth University and CSIRO); and
- government(5 delegates from QLD and SA)
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Greg Nielsen (Assistant Director General, Office of Clean Energy) address the Workshop on behalf of the Queensland Government and the QGECE Board. |
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Generally, the feedback from the delegates was positive. The industry was almost unanimously enthusiastic about the Centre and great expectations were expressed. The group discussion session was particularly enlightening. Most of the Centre research was strongly supported while there were also a number of suggestions on how things could be improved.
I am currently processing the notes taken during the Workshop. The Workshop outcomes will be circulated to the delegates as a draft document and then be made public after receiving their feedback.
Those interested, can click to get my presentation to the Workshop.
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Friday, 12 March
Geothermal energy interest grows in Queensland
The QGECE is having its first Stakeholders Workshop on 17 March 2010. The Workshop will discuss what is happening in Queensland to encourage a faster take-up of geothermal energy in Queensland and the role of QGECE in this process.
The attendance is free but by invitation only. I am pleased to note that over 60 delegates from around the nation confirmed participation in the Workshop. These delegates represent 12 geothermal companies; 8 service companies; universities and CSIRO; and Queensland and other state government departments.Regular readers of this blog know that the Queensland Geothermal Energy Research Centre (QGECE) was established by the University of Queensland with a $15m grant from the Queensland State Government. The funding started in January 2009. The Board of the Centre had its first meeting on 15 September 2009.
I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that this Workshop is an important milestone in the development of geothermal energy in Queensland. Most people are starting to realise that geothermal energy is the only option to generate baseload electricity without burning fossil fuels or using nuclear reactors. Baseload electricity is what is needed to provide 24 hours a day and 365 days a year without reliance on the vagaries of the weather. As Martin Ferguson said on ABC television on Wednesday, "geothermal energy is one of the few options available to Australia in reducing its emissions and unless we achieve significant progress in this area in the period 2015 to 2020, then Australia will have a challenge as will the global community in how we make progress in reducing emissions."
Reflecting its importance in the energy future of the nation, attention in geothermal energy has been picking up around the nation. Currently, there are 8 active projects around Australia. These are funded by the Geothermal Drilling Program (GDP) and/or Renewable Energy Demonstration Program (REDP). The dollar value of the work programs has been increasing almost exponentially. Over $1.5b in work program investment is forecast for the period 2002 – 2013.
The QGECE is developing technologies to enable production of 50% more electricity from binary plants using the same subsurface investment. This is equivalent to achieving a 50% higher electricity sales price and, obviously, would have a significant effect on commercial viability of future geothermal projects. Even though the Centre is only one year old, it has already acquired a global reputation through its pioneering work in supercritical CO2 geothermal siphon; new cycles and cycle fluids for higher efficiencies; new cooling tower designs; and new knowledge on the magnitude and the nature of geothermal resource in Queensland.
In addition to the QGECE activities, the Workshop will also have a short presentation on the new $5m Queensland government initiative to explore the geothermal potential near the Queensland coast: Coastal Drilling Initiative.
Information on the Workshop can be found on http://www.uq.edu.au/geothermal/workshop .
Thursday, 4 March
Latest news from the two leading Australian companies: Geodynamics and Petratherm
Geodynamics announced last week that it is antering a Joint venture with Origin Energy to explore shallow geothermal resources on their existing licence areas in Eromanga Basin in South Australia. In the new JV, named the "Innamincka Shallows", Origin Energy will be the Operating Company. This is in contract to their existing Joint Venture targeting HFR resources in the Eromanga Basin, aptly renamed "Innamincka Deep", where Geodynamics is the JV operator.
"The new joint venture will leverage Origin's experience, while the Geodynamics team will continue to focus on the development program for the deep resources, which have significantly greater geothermal potential. This work program remains on track and we will continue to keep shareholders informed of developments." said the Geodynamics CEO Gerry Grove-White.
Whether Origin Energy is looking for HSA resources elsewhere and whether it will be seeking leases also in the Queensland Great Artesian basin, where significant HSA potential is expected, has not been addressed. We, and everybody else, will be montoring the developments in that space.
A few days after we heard this from Geodynamics and Origin, we read yesterday the Petratherm announcement that the Spanish subsidiary of Petratherm, Petratherm Espana, signed a MoU with Enel Green Power to develop electricity producing geothermal projects in Spain and to expand to Portugal and Canary islands. Enel Green Power is the Enel Group Company that is fully dedicated to the development and operation of plants generating energy from renewable sources. The company has over 500 plants operating worldwide, with 4700 MW capacity from a mix that includes wind, solar, hydro, geothermal and biomass energy sources. The company has a strong presence in conventional geothermal energy with over 1000 MW of geothermal plants operating or under development, of which approximately 700 MW are operating in Italy and about 60 MW operating in USA. One little anecdote that stuck to my mind when I was listening to Guido Cappetti of Enel a couple of years ago in a European Conference was that all Enel geothermal power plants in Tuscany were architect designed to blend with the rest of the Tuscan landscape. Nice.
In another news item from Petratherm yesterday, the Managing Director Terry Kallis announced that Paralana temperatures meet the company expectations with temperatures of 190 oC at 4000 m. An ASX release from Petratherm states that the temperature measured at 3,674 metres using a continuous logging tool was 173°C, whilst a separate maximum temperature logging tool measured a temperature of 176°C at a depth of 3,672 metres. Based on the temperature logging data, the extrapolated Paralana 2 bottom hole temperature is between 185°C and 191°C at a depth of 4000 metres.
Wednesday, 24 February
Victorian Minister says "Yes" to Geothermal Energy Meeting
Geelong Advertiser reported last week that the Victorian Energy and Resources Minister Peter Batchelor has agreed to meet disgruntled Gherang residents. Some residents are apparently concerned about the potential earthquake risk presented by the Greenearth Energy project in the area.
The concerns are probably caused by a number of news reports coming from overseas last several months following the termination of the Basel project in Switzerland and the Altarock project in California. This shows the importance of public perception. The Greenearth Project is a HSA(Hot Sedimentary Aquifer) project that relies on the natural permeability of the reservoir. As far as I know, no reservoir stimulation is planned for HSA projects and Greenearth web site confirms that they will be no exception. I quote from the Company Announcement on 5 February:
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From Greenearth Announcement:
Q: Will the geothermal investigations cause seismic activity?
A: No. Seismic activity is in no way associated with the extraction method used to access the hot water in the hot sedimentary aquifers being targeted by Greenearth Energy. As the sedimentary materials targeted are naturally permeable (similar to the shallow aquifers providing borehole water) they do not need to be fractured or shattered. The reported seismic event that occurred in Switzerland, and which has caused some community concern, was the result of an entirely different process that requires hard granite hot rocks to be fractured to allow water to flow through the rocks. It is alleged that this process led to, we understand, the reported seismic activity. This technique of hard hot rock fracturing is not used to extract geothermal fluids from hot sedimentary aquifers being investigated by Greenearth Energy.
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The following image shows the utilisation of a Hot Sedimentary Aquifer (HSA). I think the image is from a past Panax presentation but the technology is similar to the Greenearth project near Geelong.
The assumed attraction of the HSA projects comes from the fact that the reservoir is permeable. There is no need to stimulate fracture in permeable reservoirs and therefore there is no earthquake risk.
This does not mean that the EGS is risky. It is important to note that even with the EGS projects that caused the newspaper reports from Basel and USA, the magnitude of the surface seismic events has been small (about 3 on the Richter scale) and this should be no cause for concern especially in geologically stable areas like all of Australia.
Nevertheless, public perception is important and if there is concern in Australia associated with the seismic risk from geothermal projects, Australian geothermal industry should recognise this and try to address such concerns through various means. I do not know what these means can be but, for example, it probably would help making public the surface seismic recordings taken during stimulation of EGS reservoirs and comparing them against other recordings obtained during publicly accepted practices such as underground mine blasting, petroleum and gas hydrofracturing, tunnel development in the cities, etc. Similar can be done during the HSA operation even though we do not expect any significant seismicity high enough to be measureable on the surface.
Tuesday, 23 February
Nga Awa Purua to give a 132-MW boost to the NZ grid
Mighty River Power announced that its $430 million 132MW geothermal plant at Rotokawa northeast of Taupo will start producing power by June 2010. The plant will be producing about 1000 gigawatt hours of power a year. That is more than an average year's growth in New Zealand's electricity demand and it signifies the largest geothermal development in New Zealand after the initial development of Wairakei 50 years ago. Might River, as the name implies, is a hydroelectric company but it decided to diversify due to increasing variability of the hydroelectric power stations. For example, the company generated 15 per cent less power in the latest half-year, thanks to smaller inflows into the Waikato River.
The figure shows the Nga Awa Purua construction site in October 2009.
The rectangular building on the right is obviously the cooling tower. The company brochure states that the cooling tower sits on a 165x20 m concrete foundation and houses 10 fans 10-m in diameter and spinning at 99 RPM. It is a wet cooling tower that relies on the evaporative cooling of water as well as forced-convection of air.
The geothermal fluid at 300 oC is provided is extracted from a depth of 2500 metres using eight production wells. The average geothermal production is 65 kg/second/well. The plant is a triple flash plant with a single-shaft turbine using three expansion stages. After the last stage, the steam is condensed and the majority of the condensate is reinjected (the rest is probably used in the cooling tower to provide evaporative cooling). There are five injection wells injecting the cold water to a depth of 3000m. The choice of a flash plant technology is interesting because the fluid in the reservoir contains elevated Au, As, Sb, W, Tl, Hg, Ag, Ge and Ga concentrations. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the dominant gas, while hydrogen sulfide (H2S) accounts for 0.5% by weight of the total gas discharge [Wilson, Webster-Brown, and Brown, "Controls on stibnite precipitation at two New Zealand geothermal power stations", Geothermics, 36(2007),330-347]. An earlier combined-cycle binary plant operating in the same field has been reported to have significant scaling and corrosion problems (Reyes, "Mineral Deposits in the Rotokawa geothermal pipelines:, 2002). I could not find information on the technical details for the new plant and how the scaling and corrosion issues are being addressed in the three flashing processes.
The plant was constructed by Sumitomo of Japan with the turbine and the generator provided by the Fuji Electric Systems. This is reportedly the largest single casing geothermal steam turbine in the world, capable of providing 139MW (gross)(D Hoyer and T Gray, "Implementation of Efficient Plant Designs in a Time Constrained market", SPE Paper 121360-MS, 2009).
Friday, 19 February
Ormat to double the Olkaria III Plant Capacity in Kenya
Ormat announced that it will expand the Olkaria III plant from 48 MW to up to 100MW.
I am always interested in the new plants being built by Ormat. It has not been announced what the new plant will look like but it will probably be similar to the existing Olkario III plant. The existing 48MW Olkaria III plant is located in Naivasha, Kenya and was built in two phases. The first phase of approximately 13 MW commenced commercial operations in August 2000 and the second phase of approximately 35 MW commenced operation in January 2009. It used a so-called recuperated two-phase cycle as shown in the following figure.
The recuperator is obviously applicable when the ORC fluid is a "dry" fluid or when dT/ds over the saturated vapour line is positive. Such fluids remain as superheated vapour after expansion and this superheat may be transferred to the condensed liquid in a recuperator as shown in the figure above. According to Ormat, a recuperator adds about 10-15% to the efficiency of a simple ORC without a recuperator.
The original plant had 3 units each at about 4-MW capacity using air-cooled forced-convection condensers. The following pictures depict one 4-MWe unit of the original Olkaria III plant (13 MWe).
Apparently, the expansion is also to be developed in two phases, as in the existing plant. Phase I comprising of 36 MW within 3.5 years from finalizing the amendment to the existing PPA (Power Purchasing Agreement with the Kenya Power&Lighting Co) with an option for phase II comprising of 16 MW within 4.5 years from commercial operation of phase I.
The temperature gradients in the Olkario region are quite high and reaches 200 oC/km in some wells. The following charts plots the temperature logging in some wells (PA Omenda, The Geology and Structural Controls of the Olkaria Geothermal System, Kenya, Geothermics, 27(1), pp 55-74, 1998). The "a.s.l." means "above sea level". The wells from the Olkaria West region (where the Ormat plant is located) are OW-301, OW-302, OW-304D, OW-305 and OW-307. I could not find any information about the ORC fluid used in the plant. I think a flash plant was built using the steam from the other wells also shown on the chart.
Thursday, 18 February
Geothermal Pop Icons
Two pop icons put support behind geothermal energy projects in the last week in two different ways. You know that Google has had a geothermal program for quite sometime. The guy leading this program, Charles Baron, is reported to give an impassioned speech in San Francisco last week talking about the projects receiving Google support. Google has invested in geothermal start-ups Altarock Energy and Potter Drilling. It also has given a grant to Southern Methodist University's geothermal lab for geothermal resource mapping, in what seems an obvious synergy with Google Earth. Much of today's geothermal data mapping is based on data collected in the 1970s. Since then, millions of more data points have been collected but have not been aggregated and analyzed. The Google grant supports SMU in aggregating data for the most under-sampled regions of the U.S. and in developing new methodologies for estimating geothermal resources.
The other pop icon that put its support behind geothermal was the Irish rock band U2, albeit in a more modest way. It is reported that U2 fans are asked to purchase carbon certificates offsetting the emissions they generate when traveling to the band’s shows. This will probably generate close to $450,000 and it will be used to support zero-emission power projects, one of which apparently is the Dora-1 geothermal plant in Turkey.
Wednesday, 17 February
QGECE Stakeholders Workshop
It has been about a year since the Queensland Geothermal Centre of Excellence started receiving its funding from a Queensland State Government grant. It has been a very busy year and we now have our basic power conversion laboratory facilities in place. We also have access to the world-class analytical laboratories of the School of Earth Sciences. A sizeable postgraduate research student cohort and a team of several research fellows are now working together towards fulfilling our original mission: expediting uptake of geothermal energy in Australia by developing new technologies.
It is probably worth providing some background information. Queensland of course has large geothermal resources. These resources are of two types: Hot Fractured Rock (HFR) as in the Eromanga and Drummond Basins; or Hot Sedimentary Aquifers (HSA) in part of the Great Artesian basin. The HFR and HSA resources are suitable to produce zero emission baseload electricity at a cost cheaper than all other renewables. The HSA resources can also be directly used in process heating or air-conditioning and refrigeration. It was in recognition of the importance of geothermal energy in future-proofing Queensland that the Queensland State Government awarded the University of Queensland with a $15 million dollar grant and established the Queensland Geothermal Energy Centre of Excellence (QGECE) in 2009. The Centre had its inaugural Board meeting in September 2009 and I was appointed as its Director.
It is a good time now to have a Workshop to present our Research Program to our industry and government stakeholders and to receive feedback. In particular, we would hope to demonstrate how we are planning to add value to the development of the geothermal industry and to form a basis for gaining industry feedback and bridging the gap between industry needs and our activities. We are calling this QGECE Stakeholders Workshop. The Agenda is still work in progress but it will be a number of short presentations followed by a facilitated discussion to obtain the audience suggestions and feedback. While it is not part of the Centre, there will be a presentation from the Geological Survey Queensland on the Coastal Geothermal Energy Initiative, because this initiative is highly relevant to the cause of geothermal energy in Queensland and there is a strong synergy and already existing strong collaboration between the QGECE programs and the Coastal geothermal Energy Initiative.
The Workshop will be held on Wednesday, 17 March 2010, in the Customs House, 399 Queen Street, Brisbane. Attendance is free but registration is required to help us plan for the logistics. Please use the following link to register or contact Mrs Glenda Heyde (g.heyde@uq.edu.au or 07 3365 7955): On-line Registration
Thursday, 11 February
Zero Emission Electricity To Power The Galilee Basin
It was announced last Monday that a subsidiary of Clive Palmer’s Resourcehouse Ltd will be building six mines in Galilee Basin to export 30 million tonnes. Mining requires electrical power and to fuel future growth in Galilee Basin a new 1000-MW power station may be needed.
Is it possible to power the development of the present and future mining prospects in the Galilee basin by zero-emission electricity?
I think we can say a cautious yes.
Followers of this blog know that one of the objectives of our research is a synergistic combination of clean coal and geothermal technologies, a.k.a. superritical CO2 thermosiphon. This has the capability to produce zero-emission electricity for the future development of the Galilee Basin from a combination of coal-fired and geothermal power plants.
We issued a press release yesterday and the following lines are copied from there.
The Queensland Geothermal Energy Centre of Excellence is working with American and Japanese colleagues towards a concept called the supercritical CO2 thermosiphon (see Figure 1). This is a new geothermal concept where, instead of water traditionally used in conventional geothermal power plants, supercritical CO2 is sent down to extract the reservoir heat, hot CO2 rises to the surface and drives a turbo-generator to produce electricity, and then is cooled and sent back underground to repeat the cycle. Very favourable thermodynamic properties of CO2 make this possible so that the two wells operate as a self-sustaining heat pump that brings the subterranean heat to the surface and transforms it to electricity. During the last round of the Geothermal Stimulus funding in USA, four projects received federal funding to pursue different aspects of this concept with a total project funding of $15 million dollars. Here in Australia, the QGECE is working to develop turbines, heat exchangers and other plant equipment for supercritical CO2 cycles, at the power conversion laboratory at the School of Mechanical and Mining Engineering, The University of Queensland.
The concept has the potential to increase the geothermal power conversion efficiencies by up to 50%. Sequestration of CO2 captured from coal-fired power plants is an auxiliary benefit since access to large quantities of CO2 is essential, first, to start the reservoir and, then possibly, to make up for the fraction of CO2 trapped underground.
Although this needs to be confirmed with further exploration, there are indications that a significant geothermal heat source may exist in the Drummond Basin. This is the late Carboniferous granite structure underneath the Galilee Basin.
Therefore we believe that the expected development in the Galiee Basin can be powered by a zero-emission CO2 geothermal siphon plant exploiting the heat of the Drummond geothermal resource by using the CO2 emissions captured from coal-fired power generation.
Monday, 8 February
Geothermal Energy in Turkey
I came back from my Christmas holiday in Turkey. It turned out to be a busman's holiday. The first week of my visit coincided with the TMMOB Geothermal Congress. TMMOB is the equivalent of Engineers Australia and I thought it would be a good idea to submit a paper to that Congress. I made a presentation on the Australian geothermal sector and the QGECE research. Click on my paper and my presentation . The text is in Turkish but you might be able to get the gist of what I talked about from the figures and charts.
There is a flurry of activity going on in Turkey at the moment in the geothermal energy sector. While the activities cover electricity generation and direct use for space and process heating, my interest was mostly on the former, reflecting the QGECE research focus. The present installed electricity generation capacity in Turkey is about 45000 MWe on paper. At the current capacity factors, this would cover the demand by the end of 2010 but no more. Turkey needs new capacity of 2000-3000 MWe every year. In the last 10 years, most of this growth has been met by gas power plants burning natural gas imported from Russia and other countries. The future uncertainty about the cost of natural gas is a strong motivation to look for alternative sources. The country has huge resources of brown coal. The quality is similar to the brown coal being used in Victoria; and as in Victoria, the electricity from brown coal could be very costly if there is a future international framework that costs CO2 emissions. Turkey has no nuclear power plants yet but the construction for one may start within a year. The limited hydroelectric resources are subject to the vagaries of the nature and there is increasing public opposition to the use of smaller creeks for hydroelectric power generation.
The electricity prices in Turkey have risen sharply in the last few yuears and are not dissimilar to Australian prices as shown in the following table:
| |
Daytime
|
Nighttime
|
| Industrial tariff, medium-voltage supply (kr/kWh) |
18.556
|
10.336
|
| Industrial tariff, low-voltage supply (Kr/kWh) |
19.284
|
11.067
|
| Retail commercial (Kr/kWh) |
25.023
|
15.010
|
| Retail residential (Kr/kWh) |
21.376
|
11.490
|
| 1 Kr (kurush) = 0.77 Australian cents |
A high price for electricity by itself does not make geothermal electricity attractive for private investors, who are always the lowest-cost option and, for Turkey that does not have good-quality coal reserves, this is import coal or natural gas at the current prices of these commodities. Although geothermal investments will make money (it is true; they would make money even beyond the easy geothermal reserves currently being exploited now), a prudent investor will not invest in geothermal energy in Turkey if his aim is to maximise the return on his investment. Therefore, it is clear that most of the new investment will be directed towards gas or imported coal. Since the prices are already quite high, feed-in tariffs by themselves will not be enough to motivate large levels of geothermal investment. In the humble opinion of this observer, a more intrusive government intervention is necesary. This can be either by an intially state-owned investment; or by regulating the make-up of the electricity sector so that licences would not be given for natural gas and coal beyond a certain fraction, forcing the investors into other areas. I believe it is worth for the government to consider these alternatives because of the size of the potential prize.
Turkey is rich in surface geothermal resources. Through most of the Western regions of the country, artesian hot springs provide hot water at around 100 oC and there is a hospitality sector capitalising on health use of such springs. There is a fairly good understanding of the underground resource down to 2000m. The following chart plots the well temperatures for a few locations:
There is little information for rock temperatures below 2000 m. There is a map published in a EU web site about the 5000-m rock temperatures in Europe, and according to that map, the Western Anatolia is on fire. This is shown in the following chart:
The above two maps suggest that Turkey has the potential to generate a lot more than the present ~60MW from geothermal energy. At the retail prices shown earlier, this should be possible without a subsidy although, to secure the required finance, a guaranteed feed-in tariff would probably be needed but fixed for the life of the plant. The feed-in tariff does not have to be much higher than the current prices, which are already very high. In spite of this huge potential, the government and industry circles are just becoming aware of the geothermal potential of the country. I hope I helped raising the public awareness by my presentations, participation in a TV Panel Discussion on geothermal energy and, later in January, in a one-hour interview on geothermal energy on one of the national channels, which was actually broadcast after I returned to Brisbane.
On 17 January, I was the keynote speaker in a Geothermal Energy Workshop held in Afyon Karahisar. This is a town known for its hot springs and the local industry is very interested in possibilities of exploiting its geothermal resources for electricity generation. Here I had two hours to talk and I was able to comment a bit more on what I think as the future possibilities for the Turkish geothermal sector in the light of what is happening elsewhere in the world. Here is my Afyon presentation.
In Ankara and in Afyon and in the follow-up meetings with the companies and the universities, I have been able to meet most of the people in the government departments and the industry who are interested in geothermal industry. Some of the Turkish universities are doing good work and there are possibilities for the QGECE to work with them in joint projects. We will pursue these possibilities. I suspect there might also be lessons for the future Australian HSA operations to learn from the Turkish experience and vice versa.
Monday, 1 February
I am back
I am back in my office. I had a wonderful time in Turkey. This was supposed to be my annual leave although it turned out to be more like a working holiday since very exciting things are happening in Turkey in the geothermal energy area and, while I was there, I have tried to contribute to the discussions as much as I could. More about this tomorrow but I should probably take note here now that an interview with me on the Turkish geothermal energy prospects will be aired today (1 February) at 7 pm (Turkish time) on the TV channel News 6; this is a national channel and can be watched on Digiturk Channel 126 or the satellite D Smart 7 in Turkey and Europe or www.6news.com.tr on the net.
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