Penola-Robe Project
(formerly Crower Project - South East SA)
The Penola-Robe project area consists of several geothermal exploration licences (GELs) covering more than 3000 km2, located on the northern margin of the Otway Basin in the South East of South Australia. This region of South Australia is marked by abnormally high heat flows, especially within Geothermal Resources' tenement block.
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Two potential types of geothermal reservoirs could exist in the Penola-Robe project area. The first is known as hot fractured rock (HFR) where the target concept is the deeply buried granites of the Padthaway Ridge that could be hydro-fractured to create artificial permeability and circulation of high temperature water (> 200ºC).
The second is a hot sedimentary aquifer (HSA) model where hot water of moderate temperature (125-150ºC) is extracted from a permeable sedimentary aquifer, and circulated through a commercially available Organic Rankine Cycle power generation unit. In the Penola-Robe project area several potential sedimentary aquifers exist, the most important being the Pretty Hill Formation, which is a sandstone unit deposited in the Robe and Penola troughs during the early rifting phase of the basin development. In this case, the amount of stored heat energy is directly proportional to the volume of the aquifer, which is in effect a gigantic storage reservoir for geothermal energy.
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A number of favourable attributes combine to make Penola-Robe a pre-eminent geothermal energy project in Australia:
- There is a unique possibility to exploit both HSA and HFR geothermal resources, thereby allowing lower temperature or higher temperature geothermal reservoirs to be potentially tapped, depending on what gives the best economic returns.
- Published heat flows within the project area are markedly elevated compared to elsewhere in the Otway Basin. The comparatively hot basement highs within the GEL area could significantly raise temperatures within the adjacent sandstone aquifers. This makes it more likely that either a HSA or a HFR geothermal resource could be found at shallower depths than elsewhere. This would considerably enhance the project economics.
- Major power transmission lines cross the project area, giving it a strong competitive advantage over more remote projects.
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