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ELECTRICITY GENERATION

Installed geothermal generating capacity (December 2009) in MW

Birdsville 0.08

Despite of the quite low traditional hydrothermal resources, in Australia a very big effort is on the way, both from the legislation side and from researcher investment in order to exploit the EGS perspectives of the country.

Several projects are under executions, and several new leases have been released to a very aggressive pool of companies. There is the realistic hope to have from this country in the near future the first industrial experience of EGS, after the EU pioneristic activities of Soultz.

The Birdsville geothermal power plant is Australia’s only operating source of geothermal electric power at the end of 2009. The organic rankine cycle binary plant operates on 98°C water flowing at 27 kg/s from a 1,200 m deep well generating net 80 kW. Additional 300 kW are planned.

Geodynamics Ltd is commissioning a new 1 MW pilot plant at its Habanero EGS project at Innamincka. This plant is the first stage in a planned 40 MW initial development at the site. A temperature of 250°C at a depth of 4,400 m has been reported.

Panax Geothermal Ltd operates the Penola Geothermal Project, a reservoir at about 3,500 m depth to produce water at an average temperature of 145°C from a naturally permeable formation.

Petratherm Ltd is developing a project at Paralana to extract heat from meta-sedimentary formations at depth of 3,500– 4,000 m.

The total expected geothermal EGS installed capacity for 2020 is about 100 MW.

Taken from Ruggero Bertani’s paper, " Geothermal Power Generation in the World 2005–2010 Update Report ", published in Proceedings of the World Geothermal Congress 2010, Bali, Indonesia, 25-29 April 2010

DIRECT USES

Total thermal installed capacity in MWt:	33.33
Direct use in TJ/year	235.1
Direct use in GWh/year	65.3
Capacity factor	0.22

Australia’s only geothermal district heating system, at Portland in Victoria, was decommissioned in 2006 for environmental reasons (spent water was being discharged into a surface stream). However, geothermal energy is increasingly being recognized as a cheap source of energy around the country.

A number of public swimming pools are using geothermal water in the Perth Basin in Western Australia, and at Christchurch and Craigie, and at the sporting arena "Challenge Stadium", along with it being used for domestic hot water in the arena.

At Robe in South Australia barramundi are grown in tanks using 29oC water. Here 22 local people are employed with annual revenue of AU$2 million. A similar facility is located in Victoria at Werribee.

At Warrnambool geothermal water is used for washing down and sterilizing an industrial meat processing facility.

Spas using geothermal water are located at Warrnambool and at Rye on the Mornington Peninsula south of Melbourne. This latter facility has undergone a major expansion for accommodations, agriculture, greenhouses, space heating, and balneology in a cascaded process using 45oC water.

Throughout the rest of the county a number of recreational swimming and bathing centers are located from Hastings, Tasmania in the south to Innot Hot Springs in Queensland. A total of 12 sites are listed. However, the use by all these facilities are difficult to determine, and thus, are estimated in some cases.

The Geoscience Australia building in Canberra is the country’s largest ground source heat pump installation with 2,500 kW of installed power. Other geothermal heat pump units are installed in New South Wales, Canberra, Tasmania, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland and Northern Territory.

The various applications are:

2.3 MWt and 43.5 TJ/yr for fish farming;

7.03 MWt and 61.6 TJ/yr for bathing and swimming; a

and 24 MWt and 130 TJ/yr for geothermal heat pumps.

The total for the country is 33.33 MWt and 235.1 TJ/yr.

Taken from the paper by John W. Lund, Derek H. Freeston, and Tonya L. Boyd: "Direct Utilization of Geothermal Energy 2010 Worldwide Review"; published in Proceedings of the World Geothermal Congress 2010, Bali, Indonesia, 25-29 April 2010

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