SMALL GEOTHERM BIG IN CALIF

Distributed Geothermal in California Can Add 7% of Supply What Feed-in Tariff Prices Are Necessary?
Paul Gipe, May 24, 2011 (Wind-Works)

"Small, geographically dispersed geothermal power plants could provide 7% of California's electricity supply [and compliment development of more variable renewable resources as it moves to meet its new state standard requiring 33% of its electricity to come from renewable energy by including geothermal energy in Governor Brown's as yet unannounced feed-in tariff policy]…Geothermal energy is a renewable resource using the heat of the earth to generate electricity and heat homes, offices, and factories.

"California leads the world in geothermal energy development. However…[t]here has been very little geothermal development in the state since… the early 1980s…Renewable Energy Transmission Initiative (RETI), [a 2008 engineering consultant Black & Veatch study, detailed] the cost to develop 244 proposed geothermal power plants at sites [from 8 MW to 1,000 MW] in California, Nevada, Oregon, Idaho and British Columbia…"

from Paul Gipe's Wind-Works - click to enlarge

"While many geothermal projects are connected at transmission voltages, they differ from typical central-station plants. Many individual geothermal projects are relatively small. Of the 244 proposed projects in the RETI database, 185 or three-fourths are less than 20 MW in size…[and would] qualify as distributed generation under Governor Jerry Brown's proposed feed-in tariff…90% of the proposed geothermal projects in the RETI data base are less than 50 MW…

"Projects less than 50 MW would account for 40% of all proposed geothermal generating capacity, some 3,300 MW. These plants would produce 40% of all potential geothermal generation, about 22 TWh per year (7% of current supply) or 1.7 times more electricity than at present…"

from Paul Gipe's Wind-Works - click to enlarge

"The consultants estimated the cost of electricity from the plants…[if delivered from] Independent Power Producers, municipal utilities…[or] from Canada or Mexico. Within the category of Independent Power Producers (IPP), cost estimates were further subdivided into the cost for IPPs without any federal subsidies, the cost for IPPs with Production Tax Credits (PTC), and the cost for IPPs with Investment Tax Credits (ITC)…

"While federal investment subsidies currently exist in the form of the PTC and ITC for many renewable energy technologies, their future is uncertain…[and] investors are wary of financing projects when the future of tax credits or other "incentives" is questionable…For IPP projects without access to federal subsidies, tariffs for geothermal projects less than 20 MW in California would…[run] from a low of $0.13/kWh to as much as $0.30/kWh. Tariffs for projects from 20 MW to 50 MW would vary from a low of $0.10/kWh to a high of $0.18/kWh…Projects that could be developed quickly and take advantage of the federal ITC while it remains available would be significantly less expensive…For projects less than 20 MW, tariffs would vary from a low of about $0.09/kWh to a high of $0.20/kWh. Projects from 20 MW to 50 MW in size would require tariffs in the range from a low of $0.08/kWh to $0.13/kWh…"