HFR (hot fractured rock) geothermal development company GeoDynamics announced that it has sold 22.3M shares at $1.50 per stub to raise $33.5M (Australian.) Post offering, the company now has 258.9M shares outstanding for a market cap of over $388M (A.) The company continues its development of a 500MW planned HFR project in Australia.

June 17-18, 2008, the SMU Geothermal Laboratory will host the Geothermal Utilization Conference focusing on co-production in the petrochemical and electricity generation fields along with EGS. Since petrochemical fields tend to be pressurized, full of water, and hot, it is only natural that secondary harvest of electricity is possible.

Details about the conference are available here.

Aerial view of ArcelorMittal Steel Mill

NPR recently posted an in-depth article on bottom-cycling and waste heat recovery in industrial process as a growth area. Featured in the report was the massive ArcelorMittal steel mill in East Chicago, Indiana and its approach to becoming more efficient which includes the installation of boilers above the coke ovens, which generate on the order of 100MWe, or 2,400 MWh per day.

They’ve also taken advantage of pressure differential noticing that the gas that arrives to power their plant is delivered at 30 psi, the pressure at which the gas efficiently burns is 3 psi. So the company has installed turbines inline to harvest the energy in the pressure differential to generate even more power, about 16MWe or 384MWh per day.

The waste heat and gases from the process are also being harvested (bottom cycling) from the exhausted gases yielding a further 65-70MWe. In total, this complex is recovering around 250MWe from its various energy recycling programs offsetting 1,300,000 tons of CO² emissions per year and satisfying nearly 50% of the factories energy needs.

DOE studies suggest US industries waste enough heat to harvest an estimated 200,000MWe from the processes, nearly 20% of total present US generation capacity. Clearly, this is an opportunity for improvement and recovery of existing resources and with energy prices steadily climbing, more of these programs will undoubtably be implemented.

Links:
National Public Radio Report on Energy Recycling

Calpine Turbine at the Geysers

Attribution: KQED

This morning there is news on the wire that New Jersey utility NRG has bid over $11B in an all stock deal to acquire Calpine. This is a 6% premium over the closing price of Calpine yesterday. With 26GW of generation capacity (a little less than 1GW geothermal, the rest natural gas) Calpine is a significant generator who only emerged from bankruptcy protection 4 months ago. Should the deal be consummated, the combined utility would have nearly 50GW of generation capacity in hydro, geothermal, petrochemical, coal, and nuclear powered generation.

The Calpine board is considering the offer at present. This is the latest in a wave of consolidate of the fossil fuel generators. Let’s hope the significant geothermal operation is not lost/damaged in the shuffle.

Links:
Calpine
NRG
AP Story on Bid

A few weeks ago Thomas Blakeslee of the Clearlight Foundation wrote an Op-Ed piece on the coming baseload power crunch which was very good. Blakeslee takes on our propensity as humans to want to gather and burn fuel in his latest intentionally pejorative piece The Folly of Fueled Power Plants at Renewable Energy World. The comments are as enlightening as the core article.

Links:
The Coming Baseload Crunch
The Folly of Fueled Power Plants
Clearlight Foundation