Nevada Geothermal Power
Nevada Geothermal Power is the name of a electrical power company, which has operations in at least three US States, Nevada, California and Utah. A large share of Nevada’s Geothermal power is exported to California. The Sci-Fi looking power towers can be seen going from Nevada through the Mojave desert on their way to Los Angeles and the areas of high power consumption. Nevada is expected to be the leader in Geothermal power generation — and you probably thought that Nevada’s draw was just the gambling casinos.
Here is some interesting information about Geothermal in Nevada:
On geothermal resource maps, Nevada stands out for the abundance of geothermal resources within its borders. About half the state is covered in geothermal hot spots of varying quality.“There’s tons of geothermal hot spots in Nevada,” said Lisa Shevenell, director of the Great Basin Center for Geothermal Energy at UNR.
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In all, Nevada has more than 630,000 acres of BLM land leased to geothermal developers. In the last land lease sale BLM auctioned off more than 105,000 acres to geothermal developers.That sale brought Nevada more than $14 million in revenue, with about $7 million more being split between counties where the leases are located. The 2007 lease sale saw 122,848 acres leased to geothermal companies.
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Geothermal energy is expected to cost about 7.3 cents per kilowatt hour by 2030 compared to 8.1 cents per kilowatt for wind, 12.5 cents per kilowatt hour for concentrating solar thermal and about 22.9 cents per kilowatt hour for solar photovoltaic, according to the Energy Department. By contrast, “clean coal” technology is expected to cost 7.6 cents per kilowatt hour by 2030 and advanced natural gas generated electricity is expected to cost 8.6 cents per kilowatt hour. Geothermal might be cheaper, but it’s also much tougher to develop mostly because of the time it takes to get a plant operating. The process can take from six years to a decade, according to Daniel Fleischmann, project initiation manager for geothermal giant Ormat.
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It usually takes about three years just to do resource exploration, lease land and obtain permits for exploratory drilling, Fleischmann told a group of geothermal energy engineers and developers at the conference. That can be stretched out even longer if the mineral rights on the property are shared by several holders or if there are sensitive environmental or cultural issues. It can be tough to get a geothermal project financed even in a good credit market. Energy project financing is highly dependent on the power purchase agreements with utilities. But those are much tougher to obtain for geothermal plants because about half the cost of development comes before a site’s resource is fully understood.
Laws involving mineral rights laws in the US are well defined, as are land use laws. In comparison, the Caribbean seems more like the frontier days of the old west where few if any land use laws existed. Nevada is a huge state where geothermal plants can be tucked away on large tracts of land, not so on small Caribbean islands. Admittedly the newest geothermal power plant on Guadeloupe Island, has been tucked away behind trees so that the sun bathers on the near by beaches most often are not aware that just up the hill is the power plant that supplies the power for the hotel’s air conditioning and other essential needs.
The down side of geothermal power for Caribbean islands would be securing the land for the geothermal plants. Next would be spelling out exactly who owns the Mineral Rights (laws may need to be enacted to spell out mineral rights involving mining the geothermal brine). Many of the islands are tourist destination and the power plants must be planned so that this source of revenue is not sacrificed for geothermal power. Tourism is an industry which provides employment for a large segment of many Caribbean island.
Tourism on Montserrat is another story, and with half the island mostly off limits, hiding a geothermal plant might not be a major consideration. The 2004 and 2006 meetings of Caribbean geothermal stakeholders addressed the issue of the lack of geothermal related laws on islands with geothermal potential.
Map of the general location of geothermal plants in Nevada. Source for this map is (and a larger map) is at Nevada Geothermal Power.
