Geothermal industry goes full steam ahead
By Janis Mara, Business Writer
Article Last Updated: 10/07/2007 11:58:55 AM PDT
SONOMA COUNTY - At the end of a country road twisting 89 miles north of San Francisco, black mud bubbles up from the earth and the wind carries the stench of sulfur.
Twenty-two geothermal power plants rise from the green hillside plants that generate more than enough renewable energy to light every house in San Jose.
Welcome to the Geysers, the largest single producing geothermal energy field in the world. Although the 47-year-old field is the country's largest geothermal producer, supplying almost 3 percent of California's electricity, it is virtually unknown.
As oil prices rise and legislation mandates that California reduce its carbon emissions, interest in clean energy has soared higher than Altamont's wind turbines and burned hotter than the Mojave's solar thermal plant.
But the Geysers has escaped attention — although its plants along the Sonoma and Lake County border keep churning out electricity 24/7 just as they have ever since the first power plant went online Sept. 25, 1960, using steam to make electricity.
With the pressure on utilities to generate more renewable energy, expect geothermal power's profile to rise. Studies show that California could produce another 3,000 to 10,000 megawatts of geothermal power. Add in state incentives, and it's full steam ahead for geothermal. Legislation — such as the state's renewable portfolio standard mandating that utilities generate 20 percent of their energy from renewable sources by 2010 — is helping to drive the movement.
Experts estimate that to meet its renewable portfolio standards, California must bring
20,000 additional megawatts of renewable power online. Geothermal energy has the potential to contribute 3,000 more megawatts, lighting as many as 2.25 million more
homes and employing some 5,100 people, according to a 2004 study done by Richmond-based GeothermEx for the California Energy Commission and calculations from the Geothermal Energy Association.
Some reports place the amount as high as 10,000 megawatts. One megawatt is enough to power 750 California homes for one year under normal conditions. To get an idea of the scope of this, all 22 plants at the Geysers currently generate 840 megawatts of electricity annually.
And there's more on the way. Calpine has launched a five-year multimillion-dollar initiative aiming to increase its Geysers production as much as 80 megawatts. New geothermal plants are in the works or are already coming online in other parts of California.
Boosting power supply
The Geysers generates nearly 3 percent of California's electricity. When you factor in the state's other geothermal energy plants, this clean form of energy currently accounts for nearly 5 percent of the state's electricity. Other geothermal plant locations include the Imperial Valley area east of San Diego and Coso Hot Springs near Bakersfield.
The Imperial Valley is particularly promising for additional geothermal energy, with a potential of 2,488 megawatts, according to a 2005 CEC geothermal resource staff paper. This year alone, an additional 95 geothermal megawatts came online as Ormat's Heber plant in the Imperial Valley expanded and the Geysers' Bottle Rock plant came back online.
About 135 more megawatts are expected to come online by early 2010 from new plants such Truckhaven, owned by Iceland America in Southern California, and from an expansion of the East Mesa plant, also in Southern California. Many more new plants and expansions are in the works as well.
Currently, the CEC is offering up to $5.8 million to fund projects related to geothermal development. This seed money is important; it costs some $2 billion to build a geothermal plant.
Why has California's No. 1 source of renewable energy remained under the radar amid the wave of green hoopla that has engulfed the state and nation?
"Windmills are dramatic. Everybody's seen them at Altamont. You can drive around and see solar everywhere," said John Farison, the director of safety health environment for Calpine, which owns 19 of the 22 plants at the Geysers. "This (geothermal) is focused in special spots."
Another energy maven had a different take.
"In the 1980s and 1990s, the Geysers and geothermal energy were very popular, but in the 1990s there was a depletion of (water at) the Geysers and the whole resource was in jeopardy," said Claudia Chandler of the California Energy Commission. Like the steam rising from the hot springs at the site, the Geysers vanished from the public eye for many years until a new source of water was secured.
Now, the Geysers and the geothermal industry in general are heating up as California leads the nation in developing alternative forms of energy.
Nationally, it's estimated that geothermal energy could produce hundreds of thousands of megawatts of power, trillions of cubic feet of gas from geopressured resources, and tens of thousands of quads of heat energy, according to recent reports from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the Geothermal Energy Association.
Turning turbines
Geothermal ("geo" is Greek for earth, "therme" for energy) is based on steam. Imagine a blast of hot steam from a teakettle hitting a pinwheel. That wheel is going to twirl like crazy. The same principle is used with geothermal. Hot steam from the bowels of the earth spins gigantic turbine blades that in turn spin a generator, producing electricity that zips across the wires of the state's power distribution system.
Leading a September site tour, Farison hops into a white Ford Expedition and takes off down the steep, twisting Sonoma County roads to the Geysers. The 250,000-acre area is somewhat reminiscent of the Bay Area's Tilden Park, its sweeping hills adorned with deep green pine and madrone against sun-bleached golden grass.
Except that this park is festooned with up to 4-mile-long aluminum pipes resembling silver Legos through which 350-degree steam blasts to the Geysers' 22 power plants. Of the plants, 19 are owned by Calpine, two are operated by the Northern California Power Agency and one is operated by Bottlerock Power Co.
Although not all geothermal plants produce energy the same way the Geysers do, all of them are clean. Energy can be extracted without burning a fossil fuel such as coal, gas or oil.
"Relative to a coal-burning plant, there's nothing but a trace of carbon dioxide in the steam used to produce geothermal energy," Farison said. Geothermal plants leave few marks on the land; and unlike wind and solar systems, they work day and night.
Geothermal costs 4.5 cents per kilowatt hour to produce. In comparison, coal costs 2 cents per kilowatt hour, not including the cost of getting the emissions out. Natural gas costs 5 cents.
Entering the Lakeview plant, Farison and the tour members don hard hats.
Inside a turbine case rising from the floor like a gigantic white speedbump, the blades of two 20-foot-long, 55-watt steam turbines spin madly, driven by steam funneled through the long pipes lacing the landscape at the Geysers.
Relief operator Josh Wade greets the group. Wade came to the Geysers from a coal-powered plant in Oklahoma.
"You're a little prouder for making green power," Wade said.
Hot stuff
"When you work at the Geysers, you think you're hot stuff," said Farison, who has worked there for 32 years. The plants have had a series of owners, including Pacific Gas & Electric.
Farison worked at the facility first for Unocal and now works for Calpine. The latter company has had financial woes. Since filing for bankruptcy in December 2005, the company has sold plants, renegotiated contracts and cut more than 1,000 jobs. It is currently negotiating to exit bankruptcy.
Farison, an engineer, was on the scene in the mid to late 1990s, when the overworked facility started running out of water to generate the steam. In a brilliant save, a deal was struck to pipe sewage water 29 miles from an effluent plant in Lake County.
The deal killed two birds with one stone, relieving Lake County of the treated water and restoring the Geysers. In 2002, a 41-mile pipeline was built from Santa Rosa in a similar arrangement.
This means that when people in Santa Rosa and Lake County take showers, the water is piped 29 or 41 miles and injected some 8,000 feet into the ground. Asked if the shower soap is still in the water, Farison jokes, "It makes for clean steam." He then clarifies that the water is treated before it arrives.
'The Gates of Hell'
Standing on the lip of the road looking 50 feet down, the scene below looks like a bomb site. Steam redolent of rotten eggs drifts up from mud puddled with water. Across the street, black mud spatters up from a deep hole, bubbling as loudly as water in a pot on the stove.
"William Bell Elliott was hunting for bear in 1847 when he saw the stinking sulfur steam and bubbling hot water. He named it 'The Gates of Hell,'" Farison said.
It's ironic that a site with such clean energy should look so ugly. But energy mavens and recent reports indicate that geothermal's future is anything but ugly, and its contribution to the state's resources are anything but hot air.
"What's happening is a revival of geothermal energy," said the CEC's Chandler. "You have a resource that was tried and true but overexploited; and now it's coming back. There is a great deal of potential for geothermal energy to grow."
Reach Janis Mara at (925) 952-2671
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