| Abstract |
Geodynamics Limited (GDY) commissioned Australia’s first Enhanced Geothermal System (EGS) power plant in April 2013 at the Habanero EGS resource, in the Cooper Basin, near Innamincka, in South Australia. The plant is one of only a few EGS plants operating the world, and is unique in terms of the extreme high pressure and high temperature process conditions. The achievement marks the end of a ~10 year field based research and development program that concluded with proving that electricity can be generated from an EGS resource in Australia. The commissioning of the Habanero 1MW Pilot Plant (HPP)is a globally significant achievement, and is a major step in proving that EGS can play a role in Australia’s clean energy future. The Habanero 1MW Pilot Plant (HPP) project is a significant engineering achievement, and has involved; drilling wells into granite rocks at ~4,500 m depth, enhancing productivity through high pressure stimulation, continuously circulating geothermal fluid in a closed loop through the reservoir, extracting heat from the geothermal resource, and using this heat to generate electricity. All this has been achieved with extreme process conditions of; ~240°C and ~700 Bar in the reservoir, and ~220°C and ~360 Bar at surface. The HPP project involves an operational test period of ~100 days that includes; productivity tests via an open flow system, reservoir pressure and temperature logging, multi rate circulation tests to determine overall system resistance, a tracer test, monitoring geothermal brine chemistry changes, materials performance testing, and electricity generation tests. In addition, drilling, logging, and power plant operations involve the application of equipment specially developed for the high pressures and temperatures. This paper aims to provide an overview of the HPP project, outline some of the significant engineering achievements in the project, and present some of the important results and learnings to date. |