As announced by the company, “Green Rock Energy Limited and the University of Western Australia (UWA) have been formally offered the Geothermal Exploration Permit in the Perth Metropolitan area, including the UWA’s Crawley Campus, enabling the development of the first geothermal energy project under Western Australia’s recently enacted geothermal legislation.

The UWA Geothermal Energy Project is designed to replace a significant portion of the UWA’s Crawley Campus’ electricity powered compression chillers (that produce cold water for air-conditioning) with geothermal powered absorption chillers. This commercial demonstration project will replace approximately 5MW thermal, or one third, of the electricity presently used to power the University’s central air-conditioning plants. Absorption chillers are proven technology widely used for commercial air conditioning in the USA, Japan and Europe.

As Green Rock Energy’s Managing Director, Adrian Larking, said “this UWA based renewable energy project will be the first geothermal energy project undertaken under Western Australia’s new geothermal legislation, the first geothermal powered absorption chiller in Australia and the first major geothermal project in Western Australia. We aim to be the first major geothermal project in production in Australia.”

Source: Green Rock Energy company announcement