AUSTRALIA

Australia's best resources of conventional geothermal energy are lo­cated in the Great Artesian Basin region of central Australia where there are many bores! which discharge water at high enough temperatures (above 80 °C) to operate a heat engine. Although these resources are not appropriate for large-scale electricity generation, they can be used to generate electricity for remote homesteads² and communities in this area. Examples include a district heating system at Portland (Victo­ria), a geothermal well providing hot water for paper manufacture at Traralgon (Victoria), power production (20 kWe binary cycle) from hot water aquifers³at Mulka station (South Australia), and a binary plant (150 kWe) at Birdsville (Queensland).

Section II. Supplementary Reading

D. Geothermal Energy in Different Countries of the World 127

Geothermal energy is also available from 'hot dry rocks' (HDR)buried several kilometres below the earth's surface. Recent studies of the prospects for HDR in Australia have established that a very signif­icant resource exists, particularly in eastern Australia. Moreover, the economics of energy extraction based on HDR in Australia appear to be favorable, owing to a very advantageous combination of geolog­ical factors: high rate of heat generation in the crust⁴, low-conductiv­ity sedimentary rocks which retain the heat, and horizontally oriented HDR reservoirs which provide the cheapest drilling access. Given the scale of the engineering required, the technology is likely to be most appropriate for grid-connected applications.

GREECE

Geothermal exploration undertaken since 1970 has located numer­ous fields, both high-enthalpy' and low-enthalpy. Development ac­tivities during the last five years have concentrated on low-enthalpy fields in Thrace, Macedonia and central Greece. There is now a con­siderable area of geothermally-heated greenhouses in operation. A 2 MWe pilot power plant was built in 1986 at Milos in the Cyclades, but complaints²from local residents caused it to be shut down in 1988. Environmental problems continue to inhibit³ the exploitation of Greece's high-temperature geothermal resources.

1 - скважина; 2 — фермы; 3 - водоносный слой; 4 — земная кора

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