Eco Factor: Geothermal power plant developed by Raser Technologies.
After a five month lead time, Raser Technologies has announced that their geothermal power plant in Beaver County, Utah, has started generating 10MW electricity which will be supplied to Anaheim, California. Conventionally, a geothermal power plant needs up to 5 years of lead time before it can start generating power, but the $33 million Raser plant made use of off-the-shelf modular components taken from the air conditioning industry to reduce the lead time substantially.
The geothermal plant uses technology from the air conditioning industry, which is essentially running in reverse. It also uses an Organic Rankine Cycle that generates power from underground brine at temperatures ranging from 93C to 148C. The technology allowed the company to generate power from organic fluid at temperature less than the boiling point for surface water. The plant is equipped with 50 binary generator modules that are combined in parallel to produce an output of 14MW. Out of this output 4MW is used up by pumps pulling the water up from the hot reservoirs and then back down. The company claims that during winter the plant would be able to generate about 11MW of electricity owning to the environmental factors that will help cooling the secondary fluid.
Via: Gizmag
