News
Sep 03, 2009Large Geothermal Plant Planned for Germany
HANOVER, Germany, Sept. 1 (UPI)—Germany is building a geothermal power plant in Lower Saxony, where conditions were previously considered less than ideal.
The 2 MW plant, called GeneSys, will rely on a 2.5-mile-deep well to be drilled near Hanover, in northwestern Germany. So far, Germany has only three large-scale geothermal power plants in operation. This is not without reason.
In Iceland, for example, an array of active underground volcanoes heat up the earth even in low depths. That means you don’t have to drill deep in order to harvest the heat from the earth’s interior. Some 90 percent of Iceland’s heating needs is met by geothermal power plants. Not so in Germany. Here, you have to drill deep, which dramatically increases costs connected to geothermal energy.
But a group of scientists working for a German government agency has now launched GeneSys, a plant with a one-well pumping system that has significantly reduced drilling costs, the online version of German news magazine Der Spiegel reports.
Because of its groundbreaking pumping infrastructure, the entire plant will cost only half of what is usually needed—some $13 million. It is aimed at outfitting that agency with 2 MW of heating energy starting in 2013. Over the course of its projected 25-year lifetime, GeneSys will save the agency $21 million in heating costs, the experts claim.
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