While sucess at Newberry geothermal project would be a major positive step forward for distributed generation of renewable energy for Central Oregon the financial costs already incurred and the potential enviromental risks are concerns that should be constantly evaluated.

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The drill at Newberry
By Kate Ramsayer – The Bulletin – September 28, 2009

Last year, Davenport Power drilled two exploratory wells 10,000 feet below the flanks of Newberry Volcano searching for hot rocks and water but found nothing but heat.

Now the company, which hopes to tap into geothermal power in the Deschutes National Forest south of Bend, is making plans to use a suite of other less-intensive methods to further map the underground rocks and temperatures in the area to find other potential drill sites.

When crews bored two wells just to the west of Paulina Lake, outside of the Newberry National Volcanic Monument last year, instruments measured plenty of heat but not enough water or steam to turn turbines and generate power, said Doug Perry, president of Davenport Power.

The company hopes eventually to drill production wells that could fuel a power plant capable of providing electricity to about 100,000 homes.

But first, scientists will try to get a broader picture of the area’s geology, building on geologic mapping that other companies had done in previous years.

“One of the things we want to do is engage in some more exploration activity,” Perry said. “The idea is to still try to get the best picture we can of what it looks like down deep. Hopefully, from that we would end up targeting where we would drill some more exploratory wells.”

One way to get a better picture is with narrow temperature gradient wells that reach about 3,500 feet below the surface — an easier and cheaper procedure than the exploratory wells drilled in 2008. These temperature gradient holes can be drilled from the back of a truck, like a water well, Perry said, as opposed to the 180-foot-tall derricks needed to drill the exploratory wells.

Davenport plans to create a string of up to 12 temperature wells west of the monument to gauge the extent of the area’s hot rocks.

“We think that the area of heat may be larger than just the area where we were drilling those (exploratory) wells,” Perry said. “But we can do exploration and drill these temperature gradient wells a lot less expensively.”

There’s still no guarantee that a site will have water or steam, he said. The company would have to bring back the big drilling rigs later to test for that.

But the company also plans to try out a relatively new technology. Davenport plans to drop listening devices into the temperature gradient holes, Perry said, to see if they can pick up any background sounds that might be a hint of water moving through the ground.

“This is to try to hear if there’s any liquid moving,” Perry said.

Davenport also plans to conduct ground-level surveys, he said, continuing work geophysicists started in 2006. A gravity study could help tell scientists about the different rock layers, while a survey of changes in the magnetic field could help provide clues about the location of hot water.

“We’ve tried to come up with a program to hopefully give us additional and better information about what’s down there,” Perry said.

While Davenport is still hoping to find steam to fuel a power plant, he said the company is also considering using a technology called enhanced geothermal systems, or engineered geothermal systems.

In those systems, crews drill a well and create small fractures in the deep rock, then circulate fluid through the hot rocks. That way, they don’t need to find naturally occurring steam.

The technology created some controversy after a project set off a small earthquake in Europe.

Perry said the geology is different in Central Oregon, and if Davenport receives funding to try the enhanced geothermal technology, the company will do further analysis, reviewed by outside experts, to determine the local risk. The company would also have to get additional OKs from federal land management agencies.

For now, though, Davenport is focusing on the temperature wells and geophysical surveys.

The company still has to get permission from the Bureau of Land Management for the temperature wells. The agency is getting ready to start an environmental assessment of the potential impacts of the series of drill sites, said Linda Christian, environmental coordinator with the BLM’s Prineville District.

Davenport is proposing to do the work without building new roads or cutting down trees, she said, but will instead drill along existing forest roads and in previously clear-cut areas.

“The total area that’s going to be disturbed in this whole environmental assessment (area) is 2.5 acres, in 100-by-100-foot lots,” Christian said.

The work could damage some habitat, but once the company gathers data it will restore the area, she said.

And the information will help provide a better picture of the geology in the area, she said.

“We’re trying to get the science and figure out if this is a viable alternative energy source,” Christian said. “Maybe it won’t be, but they need to look at all avenues.”

Davenport Power’s attempts to find steam to fuel a power plant have yet to succeed. Now the company will use much smaller drills in hopes of finding the right site.

The biggest reason Bend can’t be a “Solar City” is the lack of leadership and vision from the real estate and developer centric political players who effectively control the city (and the Central Oregon counties).  Portland, which has much less average sunlight than Central Oregon, led by its progressive leadership, created a Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, adopted a Solar Now! program and hired a Solar Program Coordinator.

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Clouds Can’t Hold Back Portland’s Solar Expansion
by John Gartner – Matter Network – April 20, 2009

On an unusually warm and sunny April day, Portland Mayor Sam Adams accepted a Solar America Cities Award from the Department of Energy and pledged to greatly expand the amount of solar power in the city.

Portland was one of 25 cities to have earned the Solar City award in 2007-8 which included a matching grant of $200,000 to be used for outreach to consumers about the viability of solar in the often cloudy Northwest, and to work with private companies to produce and sell solar panels. Though the 2009 award, which was handed out at the National League of Cities Green Cities Conference does not guarantee another DOE grant, city officials are hopeful that a similar amount will be made available after the department’s budget is finalized in the next few months.

Mayor Adams, who took office in January, set a goal for the city of expanding the installed solar in the city from the current 2 megawatts to 5 megawatts by 2012, and hopes that the actual number will be around 10 megawatts. Adams said that after factoring in federal and state incentives in Oregon, solar is “getting dangerously to being at a commensurate price for grid power.”

The city is developing co-marketing opportunities with contractors, roofing companies and building inspectors to communicate to consumers that installing a new roof “is an ideal time for installing solar.” The city will also include marketing materials about solar to consumers in communications from the city-operated water and sewer utilities.

The mayor said he the U.S. lack of a national energy policy for energy independence “is an embarrassment,” and he would lobby congress to establish one. Regardless of any national change in policy for energy or capping carbon emissions, Adams said Portland will meet its goals. The long term goal “is to wean Portland entirely off of [coal power plants],” according to Adams.

Despite its reputation for rainy weather, Portland receives about an average amount of sunlight annually. The consistently clear days throughout the summer and early fall make up for the long winters with overcast skies. Portland will communicate to residents that despite the weather, installing solar is a viable option.

Since the inaugural DOE grant, Portland has streamlined the permitting process for solar so that applications can be approved in a single day, and the fee for residential solar was reduced to $100, according to Lee Rahr, Portland’s Solar Program Coordinator. For commercial solar installations, the cost of the inverters and solar panels have been removed from the cost of equipment which is used to calculate the permitting fee, which can lower business fees by up to 80 percent She added that Portland recently issued a 1.5 megawatt request for proposal to add solar to eight public facilities.

Portland residents will soon be able to see who in their neighborhood has installed solar. Partly funded by the DOE grant, the city has hired consultancy C2HM Hill to develop a solar map that shows every commercial and residential solar installation in the city.

Steph Stoppenhagen, the program manager for the solar map, said it will be modeled on the map that was created for San Francisco and will be available on June 9. The interactive map will provide residents with their estimated cost savings from installing solar using data that includes their roof size and annual projected sunlight.

Hannah Muller of the DOE’s Solar Energy Technologies program says the Solar America Cities program is a change in approach for her agency because it focuses on market transformation, not just research and development. As part of the award, city officials get access to DOE engineers to help troubleshoot on solar projects.

The grant programs, which must be matched by local government funds, are used to get universities, utilities and city planners involved in the expansion of solar. Muller says the success of the program has prompted other groups within DOE to ask for expansion of their programs to include market transformation.