Green Rock Energy’s permits cover the whole of Perth’s northern coastal corridor where residential, commercial and industrial growth is planned.
Adrian Larking, managing director of Green Rock Energy, said: “The new permits are the final building blocks in our very prospective portfolio in the Perth Basin. We can now prioritise and target the best opportunities to commercialise over the next two to four years”.
Green Rock Energy has been offered a $7m grant under the federal government’s geothermal drilling programme to fund the company’s University of Western Australia geothermal energy project, which is planned for the Crawley campus of the University of Western Australia.
Upon its completion, the objective is to replicate the concept throughout Perth’s northern corridor, which includes the Stirling city centre project, a high density combined residential and commercial project with a planned 30,000 population 6.5km north-west of the Perth CBD and Alkimos, a 60,000 population residential and commercial centre being prepared as a carbon neutral development 40km north of the Perth CBD.
These two projects would result in a reduction in electricity generation demand by around 50MW if geothermal district heating and cooling were fully installed. The new permits expand the company’s potential customer base.
The additional permit in the Dongara area abuts the six permits already owned by Green Rock Energy. The Dongara region overlaps producing oil and gas fields and covers what the company believes to be the most economically prospective hot sedimentary aquifers in the Perth Basin, and in locations which could be commercialised quickly.
Work carried out by Green Rock Energy in the Dongara area has confirmed a geothermal heat flow extending above 100mW/m2 with estimated temperatures in excess of 160 degree Celsius at 3km to 4km depth. Green Rock Energy is aiming to prove sufficient geothermal energy can be recovered from its permit areas in the north Perth Basin to produce well in excess of 100MW of electricity.
