Boulder News

New West Energy Grok

West Looks to Hot Springs for Energy

By Richard Martin, 2-16-07

Geothermal heat from underground could provide a significant fraction of the West’s electricity, according to a newly released report from the Governor’s Office of Energy Management and Conservation and the Colorado Geological Survey. The study looks specifically at potential geothermal energy sources in Colorado, but parts of Utah and Nevada also harbor springs hot enough to fuel power plants.

Most of the scattered geothermal plants in operation today are in California, where subsurface water temperatures are hot enough to power conventional steam turbines. The problem in the Rockies is that the water is slightly cooler—too cool to directly create steam for an engine. The solution: a so-called “binary cycle” plant, which pipes hot water from underground through a heat exchanger with a secondary fluid with a lower boiling point than water. Heat from the geothermal fluid causes the secondary fluid to “flash” into vapor, which in turn drives the turbines. Binary plants can use subsurface water at temperatures as low as 200 degrees Fahrenheit.

The best spots for geothermal exploration in Colorado appear to be underneath Mt. Princeton, near Buena Vista. While geothermal energy will never provide more than 10 percent or so of the country’s energy, it’s an emission-free technology that is relatively cheap to produce, once the plants are built. The Bush administration’s energy budget for 2007 includes no funds for geothermal-power R&D, because the Office of Management and Budget considers it a “mature” energy source; according to the Geothermal Energy Association, U.S. production in 2005 was 0.36 percent of national electricity generation.

In other energy news:

-- How much is Denver’s trash worth? Maybe a quarter-million a year, according to the city, which is looking into building a methane plant near the Lowry Landfill and selling the electricity to Xcel Energy. Landfills emit methane gas, and the power generated from a garbage-fired plant—to be built and operated by Texas-based Waste Management, under the plan currently in negotiations—could in theory provide for 3,000 households a year.

-- Tri-State Generation, a rural electricity company that supplies rural communities across Colorado, is asking that its member co-ops sign on for another decade, extending their current contracts from 2040 to 2050. The deal is really about coal: “If all of Tri-State’s member cooperatives extend their contracts, Tri-State says it will have more financial stability and greater power to fund energy-generation programs,” reports the Telluride Gateway, “namely, three proposed coal-fired power plants.” The San Miguel Power Association, which includes many of the co-ops served by Tri-State, is considering whether to accept or reject the deal.

-- Western legislators at both the state and federal level are looking for ways to alter and shape the direction of energy development in the West. By a unanimous vote, the Colorado House passed legislation proposed by Winter Park Rep. Al White, a Republican, to make oil and gas companies more accountable and accessible to the public. In D.C., meanwhile, Reps. John Salazar and Mark Udall, both Democrats, are looking for alternatives to the Bureau of Land Management’s plan for energy development on the hotly contested Roan Plateau.

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