EGS Energy
Cornwall-based EGS Energy (Engineered Geothermal Systems) believes there is another way to get the energy we need.
Guy Macpherson-Grant and his team are motivated by the fact that Britain doesn’t have to be a net importer of energy. EGS is on a relentless search to use geothermal engineering to extract heat energy located deep in granite rock and turn it into a use-able source of electricity and heat.
“People have asked why I run a geothermal engineering company. Here in Cornwall, the UK’s natural home for geothermal activity and where there is a world class geothermal resource, it is a great opportunity for our world-leading team of experts in the field of engineered geothermal systems to build on their success elsewhere in developing these systems. We believe the age of oil and gas will pass and power will have to come from new energy sources such as this,” says Managing Director Macpherson-Grant.
With a talent for spotting opportunities, Macpherson-Grant and the rest of the EGS team are now working with Cornwall’s Eden Project to build one of the UK’s first geothermal power plants generating both heat and electricity. Bringing back together team members who were involved in Rosemanowes, a pioneering ‘hot rocks’ project near Penryn in Cornwall during the 1980s and 1990s, EGS Energy is looking to use their combined skills to pioneer this EGS approach.
With a capacity of up to 4MW of electrical capacity for use by Eden. The significant surplus (enough for approximately 5,000 houses) will go onto the grid. In addition, heat produced by the plant will be used to provide warmth for Eden’s Biomes. The £27 million project should be operational by mid 2013.
The basic principle of an geothermal system is to access the high temperature available at depth in granite and to engineer the permeability of the underground rock mass. This involves drilling two boreholes several hundred metres apart down 3-5km into a rock system that has the right characteristics to be manipulated to produce power at the surface. Cooled water can be injected in one borehole and steam is returned from the other well, heated up via the artificially created heat exchanger. At the surface, the heated water (160+°C) can be used to drive a binary power plant system, with each two borehole module generating between 3-5MWe.
The Company has been awarded £2m from the DECC Deep Geothermal Challenge Fund in capital funding for its Eden Project power plant and has applied for other substantial grants to help with development. When complete this project will be an industry milestone and mean that EGS Energy can provide truly sustainable energy in the UK.
www.egs-energy.com