The Sietch Blog

Feb 25
Got Heat?

Written by Rt

When I heard about geothermal in Alaska I learned a lot. I even made an attempt to explain the binary heat capture process (this graphic may explain better). The possibility of using oil wells was mentioned.

Ormat is another company that is looking for heat. They are source agnostic - you got heat, they want it. In an ironic situation they worked with an electrical power company to create electricity from the waste heat and sell it back to the company.

Ormat Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: ORA - News) today announced that it entered into a Power Purchase Option Agreement with Basin Electric Power Cooperative (Basin Electric) regarding five new Recovered Energy Generation (REG) Power Plants along the Northern Border Pipeline in the states of Montana, North Dakota and Minnesota.

Dita Bronicki, Chief Executive Officer of Ormat stated; “We are very pleased with Basin Electric’s decision to expand its partnership with Ormat by entering into this new agreement. If completed in full, a total of 27.5 MWs of electricity from the new power plants will be sold to Basin Electric under a long-term power purchase agreement that we expect will add up to approximately $8 million in yearly revenues to our electricity segment and increase Ormat’s portfolio of owned and operated REG projects to approximately 50-55 MWs.”

Ormat and the DOE started a test of some oils wells.

Ormat Technologies, Inc. today announced it has signed a shared-cost Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the US Department of Energy (DOE) to validate the feasibility of proven technology already used in Geothermal and Recovered Energy Generation for the production of commercial electricity using hot water produced during the process of oilfield production.

The test will use a commercial air-cooled, skid mounted standard design Ormat Organic Rankine Cycle system. Ormat will supply the ORC power unit at its own expense while the DOE will install and operate the facility for a 12- month period. Ormat and the DOE will share the total cost of the test and the study, with Ormat bearing approximately two thirds of the less than $1M total investment.

Some 8,000 similar wells were identified in Texas, by Prof Richard Erdlac of the University of Texas of the Permian Basin, and the US DOE Geothermal Research Project Office.

But Ormat’s not waiting a year to find out what it thinks it already knows - it’s going after some capped wells in the Gulf of Mexico.

Ormat paid $55,645 to lease more than 11,000 acres of offshore land in seven counties.

Depending on the exact downhole conditions, Ormat expects to employ a binary system to extract the heat from its Texas leases. Under this system hot water — generally of temperatures below 200 degrees — is pumped to the surface into a heat exchanger, where it heats a secondary fluid with a lower boiling point.

Re-entering abandoned oil wells will be a new procedure for Ormat, although they are currently testing the idea at a facility in Wyoming. The company will be experimenting with a wide range of reservoir flow potential, from generating 200KW to 200MW.

The first phase of the project is the most costly and time-consuming. Once the energy is found, the rest falls into place. “”Building power plants is not expensive. Finding the energy source is,” Thompson related.

This will not be Ormat’s first venture into Texas. It provided power plant technology used in a solar pond project near El Paso in the 1980s. In that project an Ormat Rankine cycle engine operated for 16 years at temperatures as low as 175 degrees F.

I’m starting to love this heat scavenging thing.