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

Click here for the rest of the blog