Geothermal Plants for Remote Communities

Abstract

Generating electrical power for communities In remote areas or scattered islands has always been a difficult goal to achieve. The Inherent obstacles encountered in order to reach this goal are clear and well known: access difficulties, lack of existing infrastructure and many others. in these areas, also, the power demand is quite low, even though in developing counmesmany remote areas would benefit from electrical power, if it were available. In fact, the development of these areas could be achieved at a much more rapid pace with electrical power available, while without it, it would stagnate. In this paper we will describe a new concept, applicable in those fortunate areas where geothermal activity exists, which allows simple and rapid installation of relatively small geothermal power plants of a few hundred kilowatts to megawatts, expandable, if required, in a timely manner. These power plants are based on the well proven technology of selfcontained modular Binary Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) turbogenerator units, to convert geothermal brine heat into elecmcal power. In the past decade, the extensive operational experience gathered clearly indicates that geothermal energy through the use of binary ORC power plants provides a reliable source of baseload electricity, at costs competitive with other alternativeenergy sources.