| Title | 100 Years of Geothermal Power Production - Trends and the Future |
|---|---|
| Authors | John W. Lund |
| Year | 2005 |
| Conference | Stanford Geothermal Workshop |
| Keywords | electric power generation, combined heat and power production, binary power production |
| Abstract | Geothermal power production had it start in Lardarello, Italy with an experimental 10 kWe indirect cycle dynamo. This was later expended in 1913 to 250 kWe as the first commercial geothermal power plant. By 1943 Italy had 130 MWe of installed capacity. In 1958, New Zealand had 69 MWe of "wet steam" power plants on line, and in 1960, The Geysers geothermal field in northern California was on line with 12 MWe of "dry steam" power. The former USSR produced power from a binary plant using 81 C water in 1967 - the lowest ever. Today there are 25 countries producing over 54,000 GWh/yr of electricity from geothermal energy from over 8700 MWe of installed capacity. Recent developments include binary power plants using resource temperatures down to 100 C, and combined heat and power plants. The later, mainly in Europe, improve the economics of the system and maximize the use of the resource. Other recent inovations are hot dry rock technology being investigated in several countries in Europe. Geothermal power has increased at an annual rate of 7% compounded over the past 30 years, and thus, it is predicted that the installed capacity of geothermal electric power world-wide will double in the next 10 years. |