The world is watching a hot rocks plant with massive potential in South Australia. A small start but a real one.
Innamincka in northern South Australia, will close its diesel-fuelled generators by the end of 2008 when Australia’s first power plant fuelled by hot rocks, four kilometres below the Earth’s surface, supplies electricity to the sun-scorched Cooper Basin outpost 1100 kilometres north-west of Adelaide.
Innamincka, which has a population of 12, is a long way from everywhere, and the power plant will generate only 1 kilowatt of electricity, a modest beginning. But it will be the first exploitation of deep-earth geothermal energy in what is known as the South Australian Heat Flow Anomaly, a vast area of subterranean fractured granite with estimated potential to produce 60 times more electricity than the Snowy Mountains hydro-electric scheme.
In these times of climate change, it is significant that geothermal power replenishes itself and is clean, producing none of the carbon dioxide gases that contribute to global warming. Geothermal power figures as a major contributor in Federal Government plans to drastically reduce greenhouse emissions, with predictions that hot rocks will supply 6.8 per cent of Australia’s total energy by 2030.
There are plans to expand the Innamincka power plant to 50megawatts in 2012 and send electricity 110 kilometres to the Moomba oil and gas field.
The company plans a 500 megawatt plant by 2016, when it expects to supply power down a 500-kilometre, high-power transmission line to the national electricity grid in Port Augusta, and another transmission line to BHP Billiton’s Olympic Dam mine, 490 kilometres away. The estimated cost is $2 billion.
More holes are planned for later this yearl two four-kilometre deep wells later this year and early next year and a 7.5 megawatt power plant by 2010, supplying electricity to the nearby Beverley uranium mine, expanding to 30 megawatts in 2012 and 260 megawatts in 2020, with transmission lines to Port Augusta, and 300 kilometres east to Olympic Dam. The estimated cost is $2 billion dollars.
[/tags] hot rocks plant, massive potential, South Australia, Innamincka, diesel-fuelled generators, geothermal power [/tags]