I missed this a month ago, but the Labour government just set up a $50 million fund to help geothermal R&D and drilling operations in Australia (as promised before the election): http://earth2tech.com/2008/08/20/hot-rocks-down-under-get-43m/
In related news, an Israeli entrepreneur has chosen Australia to be the testing ground for his radical plan to introduce an electric vehicle grid to Australia. He plans to build 150 battery switch stations and 200,000 charging stations in each of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane for a total of 450 switch stations and 600,000 recharge points.
He hopes to capitalise on the Labour government's new $500 million subsidy scheme for electric vehicle manufacturers. For the recharging infrastructure itself, though, he has $1 billion in proposed funding funding from AGL and Macquarie Bank.
It's awesome that Australia is the main pilot programme for this (Israel and Denmark will run smaller test programmes a year earlier), but what's more interesting is the massive potential this has to disrupt the petroleum industry, being far, far cheaper, and far, far cleaner*.
The Israeli guy plans to fund it in the long term with a contract plan similar to mobile phones, hoping to shift from a model where we buy cars and petrol, to a model where we buy cheap electric cars and pay for electricity, recharging and battery switches on a plan. I'm sure he'll sort the details out - that's why Macquarie Bank is involved.
He plans to incorporate a plan to help consumers modify their own cars to replace the combustion engines with electric engines/batteries.
I love the idea of selling electricity to drivers as a service rather than commodity.
More here: http://www.physorg.com/news143984062.html
* AGL supposedly plans to power it with electricity derived from renewables, especially wind, but even if it's just coal, that's still several orders of magnitude cleaner then the internal combustion engine, and a hell of a lot more efficient (and cheaper) in terms of energy production.
Also, here's some info to get up to date on Australia's current geothermal situation:
The 2003 government feasibility study for hot dry rock in NSW: http://www.environment.gov.au/settlements/renewable/recp/hotdryrock/index.html
Geodynamics hot dry rock Cooper Basin project (South Australia): http://www.geodynamics.com.au/IRM/content/home.html
Overview of hot dry rock exploration in Australia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_energy_exploration_in_Central_Australia
So, what're your thoughts? Seems more than just a pipe dream to me. In fact, it would appear that Australia is the pioneer for hot dry rock technology right now. It's also the pioneer for 1st generation solar cells, but unlike solar, we're actually building power plants for it here (instead of shipping all our knowledge overseas).
In related news, an Israeli entrepreneur has chosen Australia to be the testing ground for his radical plan to introduce an electric vehicle grid to Australia. He plans to build 150 battery switch stations and 200,000 charging stations in each of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane for a total of 450 switch stations and 600,000 recharge points.
He hopes to capitalise on the Labour government's new $500 million subsidy scheme for electric vehicle manufacturers. For the recharging infrastructure itself, though, he has $1 billion in proposed funding funding from AGL and Macquarie Bank.
It's awesome that Australia is the main pilot programme for this (Israel and Denmark will run smaller test programmes a year earlier), but what's more interesting is the massive potential this has to disrupt the petroleum industry, being far, far cheaper, and far, far cleaner*.
The Israeli guy plans to fund it in the long term with a contract plan similar to mobile phones, hoping to shift from a model where we buy cars and petrol, to a model where we buy cheap electric cars and pay for electricity, recharging and battery switches on a plan. I'm sure he'll sort the details out - that's why Macquarie Bank is involved.
He plans to incorporate a plan to help consumers modify their own cars to replace the combustion engines with electric engines/batteries.
I love the idea of selling electricity to drivers as a service rather than commodity.
More here: http://www.physorg.com/news143984062.html
* AGL supposedly plans to power it with electricity derived from renewables, especially wind, but even if it's just coal, that's still several orders of magnitude cleaner then the internal combustion engine, and a hell of a lot more efficient (and cheaper) in terms of energy production.
Also, here's some info to get up to date on Australia's current geothermal situation:
The 2003 government feasibility study for hot dry rock in NSW: http://www.environment.gov.au/settlements/renewable/recp/hotdryrock/index.html
Geodynamics hot dry rock Cooper Basin project (South Australia): http://www.geodynamics.com.au/IRM/content/home.html
Overview of hot dry rock exploration in Australia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_energy_exploration_in_Central_Australia
So, what're your thoughts? Seems more than just a pipe dream to me. In fact, it would appear that Australia is the pioneer for hot dry rock technology right now. It's also the pioneer for 1st generation solar cells, but unlike solar, we're actually building power plants for it here (instead of shipping all our knowledge overseas).