A new geothermal power plant has just been completed in Beaver County, Utah and will help to power homes in Anaheim. The Beaver County power plant has been named Thermo and was built in only six months by Raser Technologies, Inc. Raser Technologies specialises in geothermal power generation.

Thermo has a maximum capacity of 10MW of electricity and the technology used by Raser for the project was developed by UTC Power. Electricity is generated by tapping in to underground hot water of temperatures much lower than that needed by other technologies. Effectively a much wider possible energy resource has been made possible by the ability to generate electricity at this cooler temperature.

“This is a momentous occasion,” said CEO Brent M. Cook of Raser Technologies at the plant’s ribbon cutting ceremony. “This power generation plant with its ground-breaking, rapid-deployment design and construction system and UTC Power’s low-temperature technology can make geothermal a mainstream source of energy for the nation.”

The new geothermal power plant was constructed using a modular power plant design reducing the time for construction from the usual 5 to 7 year period down to a staggering 6 months. The possibilities for future projects are enormous.

With a recent National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) report estimating that there is approximately 150,000MW of identified and unidentified shallow geothermal resources, coupled with the fast-track power plant construction method, there is a potential energy resource available to meet one-third of the nation’s energy needs.

The key is making use of low to medium temperature geothermal resources that were thought until recently to be commercially unviable.