Thursday, 20th November 2008
Geothermal energy
The fact that the government has allocated €130 million for the creation of a wind farm is a move in the right direction both environmentally and from the financial point of view. Now research undertaken shows that wind energy here is only 10 per cent efficient. No matter how much we complain on windy days, apparently we do not get that much that often.
Yet there is hope for cheaper energy and very much less investment is needed though 100 per cent reliable day and night. This is geothermal energy.
This is no science fiction. It is here and it is working and highly efficient. The system consists of drilling a borehole kilometres deep into the earth till the hot rocks of between 150˚C and 250˚C are reached. The depth could vary between three to six or seven kilometres. Water is flushed into it and pumped up again at extremely hot temperatures which turns the turbines. This enhanced geothermal system EGS has the advantage of being put anywhere, even right next to the doorstep of Delimara power station. Environmentally it is zero harmful. If we are lucky, this hot strata of rocks could be nearer to the surface and less expensive. But it is there and effective and worth it.
As usual the Germans were the first to go at it. These have commissioned their first commercial EGS in Landau last year. It produces 22 gigawatt-hours of electricity per year. Locally the authorities may have enough geological data to weigh up the depth we have to dig. Expertise is available. The viability of such a project could be evaluated. It is not the cost that should worry us, because it is available and this could literally send the Finance Minister walking happily to the bank not to issue bonds but to deposit our savings. Dare we do it?
RSS
Comments
The problem, whatever technology we go with, is to educate technicians etc in becoming familiar with the technology, unless we want these plants to be manned totally by a foreign workforce
When I commented on offshore wind farms, Sikka l-Bajda was not even on the horizon. The comments I made were on deep-sea based windmills.
@ Daniel Russell
You could be right since Malta is fairly close to Mt. Etna. Malta also lines up with known oil wells found in and around Libya and much importance was given to their location. Seismic tests were conducted and several 'promising' areas were identified. Both in geo-thermal and fossil fuel terms, exploration is expensive and a hit and miss proposition at best. History has already amply demonstrated this.
Now that the government seems to have enough evidence that present technology is suitable for the shallow waters of Sikka l-Bajda, it should push in earnest to obtain an EIA which, hopefully will favour the project.
@ John Pace
The idea of wind generated energy is not to make electricity cheaper in the short term but more importantly to reduce our carbon footprint. Windfarms of a limited size are less profitable than more substantial ones making land based ones even less economical due to the limited space we have on land.
Unfortunately we have to pay for our mother Earth's survival.
Would it not have been wiser to have the windfarm on land at a fraction of the cost? Now it is not the government but the electricity consumers who will ultimately pay.
You are correct re drilling of bore holes for geothermal energy and the cost involved being considerable. Also I am not a geologist but would Malta fall on the lava tap which supplies Mount Etna and Lipari and other nearby Volcanoes? My guess would be not because the globergina and correline limestone in Malta are sedimentary rocks produced by compression of sand, silt and relict remains of prehistoric animals/sea creatures etc. Surely if the lava tap would have been nearer to Malta, Malta would be formed of igneous rock?
I agreed with Mr Farrugia in terms of the concept of geothermal energy and I have worked on this in theory as I said but not a practical scheme as costs have been high.
Maybe what is needed is to attempt a scheme with combined heat and power unit which is powered by biomass (woodchip) or other variations. With even a small unit, heat and power could be cheaply generated for several houses or neighbourhoods! Organisations could even be set up as energy co-operatives to sell energy cheaply to a neighbourhood?
Wind farms are very good in terms of ecological electrical generation but what about a tidal barrage?
Wind generators are here today and used by far greater number of countries than thermal energy, studies conducted and the conditions at Sikka l-Bajda found to be adequate, so why go back to square one with a totally different technology which, while it worked in a handful of cases, there is no guarantee that it will work here at a reasonable cost?
We also had high expectations of striking oil in Malta and Gozo and spent millions in both our money and that of the oil company's and came up empty.
Why should we spend more millions drilling, just in case? Oil drilling is preceded by seismic tests. In the case of geo-thermal generation, are there tests which detect hot spots and how deep they are?