Australia Pushes Geothermal Energy

_martini_ writes writes to tell us Reuters is reporting that several Australian firms are experimenting with taking geothermal energy mainstream. Geodynamics Ltd. will be making an investment decision on their first geothermal power station in early 2006. From the article: "Mother Nature has been kind to us. Australia could be the world leader within the next couple of years given the geological anomalies present in South Australia," says Peter Reid, chief executive of another explorer, Petratherm Ltd."

Comments

Re:Big anomaly

[The Nine]

You're thinking of Western Australia. :p I'm still not convinced Perth actually exists. I mean, sure, it's on the maps, but when was the last time you ever heard anything about Perth on the news, or met anybody from Perth, or had Perth's existence validated in any other way?

Re:Geothermal Is Expensive

[ian_mackereth]

This is quite different to most geothermal installations, though. Most of them utilise vulcanism, with all the attendant sulfur and such to cause the corrosion and scaling. This scheme is in granite that contains low-level radioactivity and should be relatively clean to pump water through. The basic idea is to force water/steam into one hole to open up some fissures, then pump water through those fissures to generate steam that goes up an outlet pipe to drive a turbine. The water's reclaimed and re-pumped down the feed bore.

Environmental impact should be minimal, and there's hardly any ecosystem there to affect anyway. This region was chosen for the Woomera rocket range for exactly this reason. Australia's about 90% of the area of the continental USA, and much of it looks exactly like this area; arid or semi-arid rocky plains.

There's a transcript of an article with quite some depth (ahem.) here. http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s1 440622.htm