Green Rock warms up in WA Wednesday, 29 July 2009HOT on the...

Green Rock warms up in WA
Wednesday, 29 July 2009

HOT on the heels of announcing it will develop Western Australia’s first geothermal energy project, Green Rock Energy has more good news about its exploration permit in the Perth metropolitan area.

In a statement, the company said independent assessors Hot Dry Rocks estimated that the 31/07-8 permit, covering 143 square kilometres, contained a geothermal resource of 30,000 petajoules.

The company added that while the assessment was determined specifically for the purpose of a district cooling project, production of the stored heat could be used for other direct heating purposes, including district heating, seawater desalination and purification of wastewater by distillation.

“This substantial geothermal resource is right under our doorstep and, with the expected good recoveries, will be commercialised quickly,” Green Rock managing director Adrian Larking said.

Green Rock Energy announced its plans to develop a commercial demonstration plant at the University of Western Australia after it was offered a geothermal exploration permit for the Perth metropolitan area earlier this month under the state’s new geothermal legislation.

In the statement released on Tuesday, the company said it had now accepted the permit.

The commercial demonstration project is designed to replace a significant portion of the university’s electricity-powered compression chillers with geothermal-powered absorption chillers.

According to the company, the project will replace about 5 megawatts thermal, or one-third of the electricity used to power the university’s central airconditioning plants, and will also eliminate about 10,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide presently being emitted by fossil-fuelled electricity power stations.

For the project, Green Rock will drill two geothermal wells, a production well and an injection well, to a depth of about 3000m to provide 100C geothermal water to power a 5MW absorption chiller.

The production well will be used to access and obtain the hot geothermal water, and the injection well will be used to return the cooler geothermal water following the extraction of geothermal energy in the form of heat by the absorption chiller.

Green Rock is expected to start drilling later this year or early in 2010.