George Gorski over at Seeking Alpha has posted a nice entry on geothermal entitled “Geothermal 101” – it’s a very good read and has the added benefit of exploring the geothermal supply chain in addition to developers and operators. It succeeds in giving a baseline education on the types of harvest techniques, the development challenges and benefits, and in the publicly traded companies participating in the industry.

Mr. Gorski, if you read this, there is one major correction to your article: Calpine (of San Jose – not San Diego) operates 19 of the 21 plants at The Geysers. The Northern California Power Association operates the other two. Also, two new developer/operators are working in The Geysers, US Renewables is re-powering a the old DWR Bottle Rock plant and Western GeoPower is re-powering the old PG&E Unit 15 plant. There are many more plants in California in the Mammoth, Coso, and Imperial Valley regions. Otherwise, a very good article and highly recommended.

Links: Geothermal 101 at Seeking Alpha

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No, we’re not confused merging PV with Concentrated Solar Thermal, we’re talking about another entry in the solar photovoltaic meets the magnifying glass. There has yet to be a successful commercial entity in this space, but SunRGI might just be it. This Hollywood-based, reasonably well-funded outfit claims 2x improvement over traditional PV installations using a number of approaches, chief among them concentrating solar energy 1,600x and directing it to highly efficient PV cells. SunRGI calls this approach eXtreme Concentrated PhotoVoltaics or XCPV.

Visual Representation of SunRGI performance vs. Other Solar PV

If you detect a tone of skepticism in our entry, that’s because we’ve seen this story before and nothing much has come of it. Frankly, it’s not that the technology doesn’t work, it’s that the economics to make it work haven’t been solved yet – SunRGI might have cracked the code – but we’re from Missouri on this one, show us.

The crux of the matter is the triple junction PV cells are incredibly expensive, though very efficient (37.5%) vs. the 21% seen in traditional PV cells. To date, these cells are used in specialty applications that are not cost sensitive, like space applications. Coupled with the cost issue is the cooling issue. As any child with a magnifying glass can tell you, concentrated sunlight gets very hot. Coincidentally, heat degrades the performance of the PV cell.

SunRGI claims to have answers to these questions (CoolMove Technology.) When we see an installation producing electricity over some period of time with a known acquisition, installation, and operation cost, we’ll get excited. Until then, we’ll keep our eyes on this segment as it matures.

Link: SunRGI’s Web Site

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Susan Combs, the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, has recently released a comprehensive report on energy in the state of Texas. The 33 chapter report is extensive and fact-based, covering virtually every energy source one can think of, fossil-based, renewable, and experimental. It’s really a fantastic bit of research.

Why does Texas care so much about energy? The answer is pretty simple, the average Texan consumes 3x as much energy per capita as the average US citizen and a large segment of Texas GDP is derived from energy related business. Those two facts mean that Texas suffers disproportionately as the price of energy rises but it also means that Texas has a potential advantage since it has a workforce that understands the energy business.

Chapter 21 has to do with the geothermal potential of Texas (see the map at the right) and covers co-generation as a consequence of oil/gas production, enhanced geothermal systems, and geothermal heat pumps. On the co-generation side alone, the report speculates that over 2,000MWe of production may be available. In the 1980s a 1MW co-generation test was run producing over 3,000MWh of power, but it was discontinued due to being non-cost competitive. While there are no active geothermal projects in Texas, recently leases on 11,000 acres have been granted generating over $50,000 in revenue for the state.

Of all the impact geothermal technologies could have in Texas, the most cost effective and most likely implementation is of geothermal heat pumps. A technology that effectively moves heat from the air to the ground and vice-versa. Particularly in the sweltering summer months, a GHP system could serve as a relatively inexpensive way to keep people cool as energy prices rise.

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Pure play geothermal equipment and electricity generator Ormat (ORA) turned in a very strong Q1 earnings result today. The company increased the top line from $62M to $69M Y/Y despite the fact that the product segment revenue fell by 50% in the same period. This was offset by an increase in the generation segment due to greater MWh produced and higher prices being secured for that energy.

Even better for long-term shareholders, costs were controlled tightly and were down $9M overall. But the electricity segment was down $1.1M while net output from the unit increased making it significantly more profitable. Profits for the quarter were $10M after taxes compared to -$5.8M in the same period last year.

No matter how you cut it, this was a stellar quarter for Ormat.

Disclosure: The author holds no position in Ormat.

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If they all produce like well #1, Western GeoPower will be able to save some money on drilling. The company announced today after an eight hour flow test that the well produced steam at 1,200 kg/minute flow rate – good for around 10MW/hr of electricity. Sustained production rates are predicted to be in the 7MW range. The reservoir is pressurized at 280 psia, higher than the predicted 250 psia; both the flow test and reservoir pressure may indicate that there is more resource in the leasehold than was previously predicted.

This is the site of PG&E’s old Unit 15, a 60+MW plant that was decommissioned in 1989 after reservoir pressures dropped dramatically due to over production. WGP’s original plan called for a 25MWe harvest unit, they’re now up to 35MWe, and perhaps we’ll see that boosted even higher. It would be a terrible waste to repeat the mistakes of 20 years ago and not manage the reservoir in a sustainable manner. We trust WGP is sensitive to this issue and will take steps to maximize production while keeping the resource viable.

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