Swiss Plans for Geothermal Power

I was in Bethesda over the last week attending the Geothermal Technology Program review, which is a progress review of the projects funded by the Department of Energy.  Today I am starting the journey to come back home.  It is a long journey and I am not looking forward to it.

However, I am glad to have spent the time to be here during this week.  The GTP is a big budget program including the projects being funded by the $500m geothermal stimulus funding program awarded in 2009. As in any big budget program there some very exciting projects and there are some ordinary ones.  Today, I am going to write on another meeting I attended here, the IPGT meeting yesterday.

We have known for some time that Switzerland was joining the IPGT but yesterday was the first time that I became aware of the expansion Swiss are planning in the geothermal sector.  Starting from zero at the present. the plan is to be generating 4.4 TWh by 2050.  This is as much geothermal electricity as the current installed geothermal capacity in New Zealand or Iceland.

The Geo-Energie Suisse will develop EGS in Switzerland and the schedule calls for a pilot plant by 2015.  The expected resource temperature is 160oC at depths of about 5000m.  This is lower than the resource temperature we would expect in Australia in such depths but the lower ambient temperatures should help with the cooling of the condensers and compensate to a certain extent for the relatively low brine temperatures.

The most interesting thing about the Swiss plans was the generosity of the feed-in tariff that is out in place to make sure this planned expansion takes place.  All geothermal electricity will have a guaranteed sales price of 48 cents/kWh.  This covers plants up to about 5MWe in size.  Don't we wish we had half of that incentive in the down under power markets?

Click here for the rest of the blog