By Region,Asia,By Region,Australia & Oceania,General - March 05, 2010
Origin Energy and Tata Power may bid for project in Indonesia
written by: lxrichter - Picture: Geodynamics drilling rig at Jolokia 1 (source: Geodynamics)
In a news piece today, it is reported that “Origin Energy Ltd., the Australian electricity and gas retailer, and India’s Tata Power Co. may bid to develop a geothermal power project in Indonesia, the Sydney- based company said.
Origin, with Tata, “has registered its interest in bidding for geothermal energy concessions in Indonesia,” the company said in an e-mailed statement today. “This is consistent with Origin’s strategy of pursuing exploration opportunities near growing markets.”
This seems to be somewhat of a logical step, given the companies involvement in Australian Geodynamics.
Source: Bloomberg
This entry was posted on Friday, March 5th, 2010 at 3:44 pm and is filed under Asia, Australia & Oceania, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
It is important to differentiate between geothermal projects based on volcanic heat and those based on radioactive heat. Australia doesn’t have volcanic hot spots and the Geodynamics projects are using radioactive heat, which is very deep (4,500 m) and not very high temperatures (~210°C). Indonesia has lots of volcanic hot spots. These are at shallow depth and very high temperature (~800°C).
It is much easier to get volcanic geothermal to give a good energy return for energy invested.
Well indeed, but the Australian sector is not solely focused on EGS technology and there are some promising Hot Sedimentary Aquifier projects. While the hydrogeothermal projects world-wide are of more short term doable, EGS will play a major role in the overall geothermal energy mix. So the development done in Australia on that technology is indeed very important. … it also would extend the possibilities and geographical reach of geothermal power generation world-wide.