POWER June 2013 - 10

3. A hot-and-cold reality. Lockheed Martin and the Beijingbased
Reignwood Group have agreed to develop a 10-MW ocean
thermal energy conversion (OTEC) plant that would exploit the ocean's
thermal gradients to fully power a new resort community in southern
China. Conceptualized in the 1880s, OTEC's many benefits are shadowed
by the high costs and risks associated with seawater systems.
This image shows researchers laying a cold-water pipe at Keahole
Point, Hawaii, in the early 1990s. The pipe supplied cold water for an
OTEC experiment at Hawaii's Natural Energy Laboratory-a 210-kW
project that has been billed as the largest net-producing OTEC system
tested. Courtesy: A. Resnick
4. Digging deep. Ormat Technologies, the U.S. Department of Energy,
and GeothermEx in April said they had successfully produced 1.7
additional megawatts from an enhanced geothermal system (EGS) project
inside an existing well field at Ormat's Desert Peak 2 geothermal
power plant in Churchill County, Nev. This image, taken in 2008, shows
an EGS wellhead at Ormat's Desert Peak project. Courtesy: NREL
posite piping for obtaining cold water using a $1.2 million grant
from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). And in 2009, following
a $8.1 million contract with the U.S. Navy, the company
continued to develop a 10-MW OTEC pilot plant in Hawaii, which
included creating a robust interface between the platform and
cold water piping. That project was apparently cancelled after
the Navy deemed the project too costly.
According to NREL, cost is the most significant reason the
technology has failed to reach larger scale, despite the investigation
of many potential thermodynamic cycles to reduce overall
costs. The estimated capital cost for OTEC in 2011 ranged from
$10,000/kW to $15,000/kW, and the majority of costs are linked
to seawater systems, the research lab says.
However, the technology's potential benefits are lucrative,
Lockheed says. Not only can OTEC serve as a baseload power
source that is renewable, OTEC power can also be used to produce
hydrogen (via electrolytic processing of freshwater) and ammonia,
which can be shipped to areas not close to OTEC. The system
can also include freshwater production by flash evaporating the
warm seawater and condensing the subsequent water vapor using
seawater.
Once a proposed plant is developed and operational in China,
Lockheed and Reignwood plan to use the knowledge gained to
improve the design of the additional commercial-scale plants-of
up to 100 MW-to be built over the next decade.
U.S. EGS Project Adds 1.7 MW GridConnected
Output
One of the first enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) was connected
to the U.S. electric grid this April, marking a major
milestone for the fledgling technology that seeks to tap the
enormous terrestrial heat potential deep within Earth's crust
using directional drilling and pressurized water. Reno, Nev.-
based Ormat Technologies, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)
and Schlumberger subsidiary GeothermEx said they had stimu10
lated
an existing injection well to increase power output from
brine by 1.7 MW at Ormat's grid-connected 26-MW Desert Peak
2 geothermal plant in the Brady complex in Nevada's Churchill
County (Figure 4).
EGS, a method also referred to as a hot dry rock or hot fractured
rock system, has been around for more than three decades.
Around the world, several large-scale EGS field projects have
reached varying degrees of success, but only one project-the
2007-commissioned 3.2-MW Landau project in Germany-has
sustained commercial production rates. The method has been
stalled by a variety of issues, foremost among them an exponentially
higher power cost than for fossil-fueled generation,
owing to expenses associated with drilling of deep geothermal
wells, experts say.
EGS is essentially an engineered heat exchanger designed to
extract geothermal energy under circumstances in which conventional
geothermal production is uneconomic or inefficient.
It involves " enhancing " the permeability of deep hot rock by
hydrothermal fracturing, high-rate water injection, and/or
chemical dissolution of minerals by drilling production wells
to depths of 10,000 feet and beyond where temperatures reach
upwards of 350F. A cold working fluid-water, typically-is
then allowed to flow through the deep openings in the rock
to further crack it and to mine its heat energy. When the water
is pumped back to the surface, the resulting steam is used to
power a turbine to generate power. The water is cooled again
into a liquid and injected back into the ground to repeat the
cycle in a closed-loop system.
Ormat's Desert Peak EGS project uses a production well at
a previously built geothermal site in Churchill County, and
its developers say that since beginning power production, it
has increased power output at the site by nearly 38%. The
project was of particular significance to Ormat because it
helped the company demonstrate how EGS could be employed
on sub-commercial wells. " This could enable us to use unproductive
wells to generate more power and new revenue, "
explained Lucien Bronicki, Ormat's founder and chief techwww.powermag.com
POWER
| June 2013
http://www.powermag.com

POWER June 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of POWER June 2013

Contents
POWER June 2013 - Cover1
POWER June 2013 - Cover2
POWER June 2013 - Contents
POWER June 2013 - 2
POWER June 2013 - 3
POWER June 2013 - 4
POWER June 2013 - 5
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