Geopower Basel are a power company who are competing with a firm in Australia to become the first company to general power commercially by boiling water on the rocks under the earth’s surface.

It’s a simple idea – geothermal power. The company are planning to drill down, pour cold water into the shaft until it is Geopower Basel are a power company who are competing with a firm in Australia to become the first company to general power commercially by boiling water on the rocks under the earth’s surface.

It’s a simple idea – geothermal power. The company are planning to drill down, pour cold water into the shaft until it is superheated where it is brought back up to the surface again. This superheated water uses a steam turbine to generate electricity. If all goes to plan, the project should be able to meet the electricity demands of 10,000 homes, and be able heat 2,700 houses.

Geothermal power is highly rated by many scientists – it’s clean, quiet and it doesn’t run out. It has the potential to fulfil the heating and electricity needs of the entire world 250,000 times over with almost no impact on climate or the environment. It also has the advantage that it doesn’t depend on the sun or the wind therefore is available 24 hours a day and should supply fairly steady supplies of electricity.

Of course in reality, it isn’t that simple. On December 8, engineers were drilling deep into the Earth’s crust. Unfortunately, their actions caused a small earthquake measuring 3.4 on the Richter scale with several smaller tremors following and the engineers were ordered to put the project on hold by Basel authorities.

Geothermal power is powerful and has massive potential. A study by MIT earlier this year said that if 40% of the heat under America was tapped, it would meet the demands of the country 56,000 over. An investment of around $1 billion would see 100 gigawatts of energy produced by 2050 – that’s the same output as all the 104 nuclear power stations scattered around the country.

There are drawbacks to geothermal energy though – a geothermal shaft costs around $8million whereas an oil well shaft only costs around $1.44 million. The rocks tapped by the shafts would also lose their heat after a couple of decades of use and new shafts would need to be drilled elsewhere.

The costs are one of the barriers to entry for this technology which is fairly expensive in comparison to a lot of other renewable energy sources. Although heat from the earth has been used for centuries and geothermal energy is already in use in 24 countries, these heat sources are normally in the shape of geysers and hot springs – heat sources that are close to the surface. Hot rock technology drills to a point a lot deeper where the granite layers are around 400 degrees Fahrenheit in temperature. The wells are deeper than those used for oil and are much wider to accommodate the water cycle.

Many large energy companies have researched geothermal power but are not willing to invest in it quite yet. Geopower Basel are one of the few companies who are investing in the technology.

Last year, Geopower Basel started to dig. The results were as expected with water being heated to around 390 F. However, with the earthquakes, the water remains in the rocks as the rock layers started to slip causing the earth tremors. The energy company had predicted some rock slippage – they claimed that the actual dig location was on top of a fault line and this was an advantage because the heat was closer to the Earth’s surface. However, they have so far spent $51 million and with drilling currently halted, the launch date has moved back from 2009 to 2012. Two more wells still have to be dug and it is these that will draw the superheated water back up to the surface to be pushed through the turbines to produce electricity.

Their rivals are working in Innamincka, a small town in southern Australia. With a smaller population and more benign geological conditions, it is now probable that they will beat Geopower Basel to the finishing line. They are aiming to produce 40 megawatts of electricity from their wells by the end of 2010 – electricity which should be able to meet the demands of 30,000 homes.

Nick Nuttall, chief spokesman of the UN Environment Program has summed up many companies’ views of geothermal power. “This technology sounds very promising,” he said. “But let’s just wait and see.”

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