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To: carl a. mehr who wrote (94515)	12/11/2007 1:29:18 PM
From: microhoogle!	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 206334

Alcoa, Iceland group to develop geothermal power reuters.com

To: carl a. mehr who wrote (94515)	12/11/2007 1:31:35 PM
From: JimisJim	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 206334

carl: how about The Geysers in northern California, the world's largest single source of geothermal power... or the CalEnergy Navy I flash geothermal power plant at the Coso geothermal field. More on The Geysers: The Northern California Power Agency will use solar energy to help generate geothermal energy at the Geysers geothermal field north of Calistoga. The agency will install 6,300 solar modules on an existing water pumping station that takes wastewater from Lake County and places it deep underground. Earth's heat turns the water into steam, which power plants on the surface use to generate electricity. The agency operates two power plants at the Geysers. They are using wastewater to generate geothermal power, and using solar to power the wastewater pump. The $8.2 million project will be designed and built by SPG Solar of Novato and should be finished by September 2008. Jim

To: carl a. mehr who wrote (94515)	12/11/2007 1:39:49 PM
From: JimisJim	Respond to of 206334

carl: also... The United States is the country with the greatest geothermal energy production, according to wikipedia... and: The largest dry steam field in the world is The Geysers, 72 miles (116 km) north of San Francisco. The Geysers began in 1960, has 1360 MW of installed capacity and produces over 750 MW net. Calpine Corporation now owns 19 of the 21 plants in The Geysers and is currently the United States' largest producer of renewable geothermal energy. The other two plants are owned jointly by the Northern California Power Agency and the City of Santa Clara's municipal Electric Utility (now called Silicon Valley Power). Since the activities of one geothermal plant affects those nearby, the consolidation plant ownership at The Geysers has been beneficial because the plants operate cooperatively instead of in their own short-term interest. The Geysers is now recharged by injecting treated sewage effluent from the City of Santa Rosa and the Lake County sewage treatment plant. This sewage effluent used to be dumped into rivers and streams and is now piped to the geothermal field where it replenishes the steam produced for power generation. Another major geothermal area is located in south central California, on the southeast side of the Salton Sea, near the cities of Niland and Calipatria, California. As of 2001, there were 15 geothermal plants producing electricity in the area. CalEnergy owns about half of them and the rest are owned by various companies. Combined the plants have a capacity of about 570 megawatts. The Basin and Range geologic province in Nevada, southeastern Oregon, southwestern Idaho, Arizona and western Utah is now an area of rapid geothermal development. Several small power plants were built during the late 1980s during times of high power prices. Rising energy costs have spurred new development. Plants in Nevada at Steamboat near Reno, Brady/Desert Peak, Dixie Valley, Soda Lake, Stillwater and Beowawe now produce about 235 MW.

To: carl a. mehr who wrote (94515)	12/11/2007 3:25:03 PM
From: Elroy Jetson	Respond to of 206334

In 1981 Chevron's board came to the conclusion that Chevron had no natural advantage in building or operating electrical generating plants, even though Chevron had developed expertise in locating geothermal resources. The analogy was that Chevron provides oil and gas for electrical generation, but does not build or operate the power gas/oil power plant except in rare cases where they don't have a choice. As a consequence, Chevron's Heber, and Brawley projects in California and the project near Fernley Nevada had to become joint-ventures with power generation companies. When Unocal, which operated power plants at Geysers CA, Hawaii, and other locations around the world, became part of Chevron these power plants and the geothermal sources to power them were sold off. As in this example: 64.233.167.104 Below is a recent list (May 2007) of the operating geothermal plants in the United States, from the Geothermal Energy Association. Many of these resources were originally developed by Chevron or Unocal. geo-energy.org The Chevron/Unocal geothermal groups continued to locate and develop geothermal resources, occasionally building and operating a power plant themselves when no reliable partner could be found to operate the plant. As a result, Chevron is the world's largest producer of geothermal resources, and is also reluctantly the world's largest producer of geothermal electrical power. Chevron's current portfolio of geothermal properties are located primarily in Indonesia and the Philippines. In my opinion, both Chevron and Unocal were hampered in the early years by an over-reliance on geologists whose sole stock in the geothermal trade consisted of little more than drilling shallow 500 ft temperature gradient holes, over geophysicists who mapped the deep fractures which are the source of each high-temperature geothermal resource. Geophysicists have largely won out in geothermal prospecting. In the coming years, the largest utilization of geothermal will be shallow low-temperature wells combined with a heat-pump to heat buildings, such as the system installed in Buckingham Palace. This heat resource is widely available and avoids the problems of silica-deposition which increases costs in high-temperature sources used for electrical power generation. .