The Great Lakes Zephyr - Wind Energy & Hydrogen Journal

Also from ENN, it's hot rock candy Down Under...

Friday, August 22, 2003
By Marie McInerney, Reuters


INNIMINCKA, Australia — Australia's unforgiving outback swelters for months every year, but the heat of ancient rocks beneath the red sands at towns such as Innimincka is about to be tapped as a source of renewable energy.

Engineers are preparing to trigger a range of micro-earthquakes in the Earth's crust just outside Innimincka to test whether the rocks can unleash green energy at volumes equivalent to about half of Kuwait's oil reserves.

If they're successful and a feasible operation can be mounted, Innimincka's Habañero Well — named after the world's hottest chilli variety — could deliver a major new renewable energy source, at least competitive with natural gas.

"You might not feel it," Bertus de Graaf told his visitors as they swatted flies and stumbled over gibber rocks at the remote site 1,050 km (650 miles) north of Adelaide. "But you are all standing above the hottest spot in the Earth's upper crust outside volcanic centers," he said.

De Graaf is managing director of Geodynamics Ltd, which is drilling Australia's deepest well 4.9 km (3.0 miles) into basement granite to tap into hot rock temperatures of up to 300 degrees Celsius (570 degrees Fahrenheit).

"The geothermal resource below is so large that it can potentially generate massive amounts of zero (greenhouse) emission energy," he said. "We have here potentially a 'gusher' in hot rock geothermal energy," said de Graaf.

Tapping Natural Heat

It all may sound a little like Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth, but hot dry rock (HDR) geothermal energy is one of the great hopes of renewable energy. As Geodynamics says, generating electricity from the Earth's heat isn't new. Countries such as Italy, Iceland, New Zealand, and Japan have been...(Read on in: Outback Australia sizzles with hidden power)