Geothermal

[tada]

The Hawaii Business article is a great education. I saw it last year at the library as well the Guy Toyama interview.

Just think- it's huge burden off the residents shoulders if utility costs was lower especially poor folks. Some residents might look at lowered "barriers to entry" as a bad thing if it's more attractive to outsiders. But I'm lucky l can't understand how some families can survive with a crushing burden of taxes, medical costs, mortgage as well as utility cost.

[Seeb]

Has anyone looked at the Blenheim-Gilboa Pumped Storage Power Project

[Obie]

Here is some information that may prove useful:

FOSSIL FUELS supplied 69.6% of the electricity produced in 2009 (Diesel 16.0%, Residual Fuel Oil 26.4% and Naphtha 27.2%) compared to the previous year of 68.0%. Power plants included HELCO’s Shipman and Hill Plants in Hilo, Puna Plant in Kea’au, Keahole Plant in Kona, and Waimea Plant in Waimea. In June 2009, HELCO completed an upgrade of the Keahole Plant, improving fuel efficiency and increasing its output to 78 MW. IPPs include Hamakua Energy Partners in Honokaa.

And here:

http://www.helcohi.com/vcmcontent/FileSc...uelOil.pdf

[Obie]

PGV has a plan in place in case of an eruption.

What happens in the event of a lava flow in the area?

Because the Puna geothermal facility lies in a high lava hazard zone, the equipment is especially protected. The turbine-generators are built on skids, and can be removed quickly in the event of a lava flow. The well is contained in a concrete bunker that can be closed off and protected from the lava flow. Once the danger is past, the well can be reopened using modern GPS technology and the turbine-generator repositioned.

In the case of an earthquake that would shear off the well casings,I think we would have bigger problems to worry about than PGV.
An earthquake of that magnitude would likely destroy highway 130 or at least it would be blocked by debris.

We wouldn't evacuate to Hilo because it would be destroyed also.

Edit to add that I was being facetious here.It would be very unlikely that the well casings would be damaged.My home was undamaged in the 1975 earthquake even though much of my neighborhood subsided several feet .

[geochem]

Richard Ha asked me to address some of the questions about the resource and the hazards:
1) In terms of the magnitude of the resource that may be available, that is something that is unknown at the moment, but there is an effort underway to do a geothermal assessment state-wide. We have a sense of where the hydrothermal systems are likely to exist, in the rift zones and calderas of the volcanoes (whether currently active or long since quiet), and geophysical tools that will give us information on subsurface thermal conditions. The assessment will look at the rift zones on Hawaii Island, on Maui, and Oahu initially. In order to "prove" the resource, someone - private $ - will need to drill one or more test holes into the rift areas that the geophysics indicates may have residual heat. The geophysical equipment has been ordered and as soon as it is available, the field surveys will begin. It is likely to take at least a couple years to complete this assessment - but the intent is to make a comprehensive assessment of likely geothermal resource areas in the state. If viable resources are found closer to electrical demand (West Hawaii, Maui, Oahu) then it is likely that development will occur there to minimize transmission costs and transmission losses.

One afterthought: not every well drilled will be successful, this has occurred in every geothermal system that has been developed for power. But as we gain experience with the geophysical tools and the drilling, the likelihood of poorly performing wells will be reduced, as has also occurred in other geothermal fields.

2) With regard to the risks to geothermal development: certainly the Kilauea East Rift poses significant geologic risks. That is likely to also encourage development in areas of lower geologic risk on less active rift zones. However, the risk from earthquakes damaging the wells is quite low: the well bore is more flexible than the basalt formation and earthquake waves will, usually, pass through the rock formation without any adverse affect on the well. The exception to that would be if the earthquake fracture itself passed through the well-bore. Because most of the fractures in the east rift are near vertical, and the well bore is typically vertical, the likelihood that a fracture will intersect the well bore is pretty small. There has been only one instance where an earthquake fracture passed through a well bore: that was in Iceland where they had a graben-forming event (spreading on the mid-atlantic ridge) where the spreading allowed a "keystone" wedge of the geothermal field to drop a foot or so. That process sheared off a well below ground - ruining the well but having no other effect - while a nearby well continued to produce.

A previous comment said that an earthquake would cause other devastating damage in Puna. That kind of statement isn't very productive: Puna is at high risk of earthquakes but not the Hollywood kind where the world ends. Earthquakes will occur in future as they have in the past: we had a 7.6 earthquake in 1975: it caused damage but that kind of damage can be, to a great extent, prevented with properly engineered structures and properly engineered geothermal facilities. Puna had some shaking in 1983, from the 6.6 Kaoiki earthquake, again in 1989 from a 6.1 earthquake on the upper east rift, and most recently from the Kiholo Bay earthquake. None of these events damaged operating geothermal facilities or wells.

[geochem]

quote:

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Originally posted by dakine

Because we used the environmental impacts as the basis of our concerns, and had gotten the NPS, the USFS, and US Fish and Wildlife to be a party to our complaint, this resulted, a few years later, in the introduction of the idea that the forest in the middle rift to be of a lessor biological concern, and the eventual land swap, in which Campbell estates traded their holdings in the upper rift for the land in the middle rift, just mauka of Pahoa.
http://akamaidesign.com

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dakine, you are shading the history a bit here: the original proponent of the land swap was the attorney representing the opponents to the proposed geothermal development with supportive testimony coming from NPS, Sierra Club, and others opposed to the development. I was there too...

[Royall]

geochem, is it true, that when the demand on the power grid is low, Helco makes PGV and the Windmill farms cut back on their production BEFORE cutting the oil consuming plants back? Have you heard this before? Where's economics in that if it is true??

Royall

Hale O Na Mea Pa`ani

[Seeb]

If your running large boilers you can't just flip a switch, it can take a day to start up or shut down

[james weatherford]

Please keep up this good discussion.
Plenty here to ponder.
As I previously indicated, there are too many assumptions and not enough answers to questions.
My objective was not to be "for" or "against" geothermal, per se.
Generating a conversation is what I wanted to do -- the one and only certainty I have about geothermal in Puna is that we all need to keep communicating openly and honestly and keep open to what other people have to say, as long as we can do that by sticking with facts and without casting aspersions.
Several points have been made that I want to respond to later in a condensed response.

[geochem]

quote:

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Originally posted by Royall

geochem, is it true, that when the demand on the power grid is low, Helco makes PGV and the Windmill farms cut back on their production BEFORE cutting the oil consuming plants back? Have you heard this before? Where's economics in that if it is true??

Royall

Hale O Na Mea Pa`ani

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Aloha Royall,
I have been told that this is the case by people who should know. There is no great secret on this - my understanding of the situation is that they have boilers and turbines that are intended to run 24/7, referred to as their "base load" generation. They can turn the output on that equipment down only so far without shutting down entirely. If they do shut it down, the boiler and turbine would then have to go through a significant temperature cycle that they need to control in order to minimize the degradation of the equipment (seals and so forth). It could take as long as several hours for the cooling down and then reheating the equipment before they could bring that generation equipment back on line. Even then, it would result in more wear and more maintenance on the equipment and likely a shorter life. In what may be a silly analogy, it would be similar to turning off your car engine every time you came to a traffic light. You could do that, but it wouldn't be long before you were replacing your starter and sundry other parts of your car's engine and exhaust system. Bottom line, you could do it, but the engine wasn't designed to operate in that mode and the maintenance costs would exceed what you saved in fuel. With a large steam turbine, you have several tons of spinning turbine, seals, bearings, valves (controlling steam entry) and a mass of other hardware that was built to go up to operating temperature and stay there for months at a time. HELCO has other equipment that is designed to pick up and drop off load (power out) very rapidly, and that equipment is designed for that purpose; but the fuel to run it is much more expensive than the base load generation.

That's how I understand the system operates. The power grid we have has been developed over a period of 100 years or better. Integrating new energy resources, having different production characteristics and different response times (and reliability), is difficult and may be expensive. Maintaining a reliable source of power 24/7 is not an easy task and making fundamental changes to the supply can't (shouldn't) be done recklessly. Everyone will lose that way.