is anyone out there?, page-12

Ploppy,

The 1MW pilot plant will always just remain a pilot plant. It can be used for careful long term monitoring of slow changing effects that might show in the underground heat exchanger and in the circulating plumbing.

It is not known yet how much power can be extracted from one HAB well pair (one for up flow, the other to reinject). This depends on the flow rate of hot brine that can be extracted. It is exactly for this reason that Geodynamics are presently trying to pressure stimulate the small cracks to enlarge the gap so that more liquid can flow into the well.

They also hope to increase the flow rate by stimulating other systems of cracks that cut across at different levels of the same well. They have not done that at all yet.

A few years ago the plan was to try to get 10 MW (electric) per pair of wells. Now they avoid giving what they are hoping for.

Drilling wells is really expensive so that they are also trying to find ways of putting down fewer wells for the same power out. That’s hard. One way to do this is to increase the distance between each well pair. But that is not so simple as then more power will be used up in pumping fluid through the narrow cracks perhaps two kilometres long. They started out with wells 500m apart which worked fine, then at 1000m apart (HAB 1 to HAB 3) it was only just OK but incomplete. The seismic diagram for HAB 4 published on Monday indicates that some flow can be expected between wells 2000m apart; but how much flow?

It is only after they have got a complete system worked out and tested, at a reasonable cost, that they will start duplicating the process to sell the electricity. At that time they will start drilling lots of wells madly. They will then go for 25 MW or 50 MW power plant units. That is some time away.

Right now I’m looking forward to the third flow test to be conducted in February.

I hope that is clear enough, Ploppy?

Juke