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Geothermal project steams ahead

Posted on March 5, 2010, 10:10am

Resources and Energy Minister, Martin Ferguson, today opened the Panax geothermal project near Penola.

Panax successfully applied for $7 million under round one of the Federal Government’s $50 million Geothermal Drilling Program.

Visiting the site, Mr Ferguson said South Australia offers great opportunity to develop geothermal energy technology.

“The Panax project is a pioneer in the exploitation of hot sedimentary aquifers in Australia,” he said.

“It will also test the potential of the Limestone Coast for geothermal development.

“There is potentially a resource of up to 1500MW available in this region, which importantly, is located close to existing electricity grid connections.

“Preliminary analysis by Geoscience Australia suggests that extraction of one percent of the energy from Australian geothermal sources could yield 190 million petajoules of energy. This is 26,000 times our primary power usage of 2005.

“Geothermal energy is particularly important because of its potential to supply base-load electricity to the Australian grid from a zero-carbon renewable source.

“In doing so, it meets our objectives to increase energy security by diversifying energy sources, reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions and to supply 20 per cent of Australia’s electricity by 2020 from renewable sources.”

The geothermal drilling program, with funding of $50 million, is part of the government’s $4.5 billion “Clean Energy Initiative”.

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