Alaskan Chena Hot Spring to receive $1m grant to research new development
Chena Hot Springs, Alaska/ U.S. (source: flickr/ r.rosenberger, creative commons)
Alexander Richter
9 Jun 2011
Alaskan Chena Hot Springs Resort is to receive $1 million in federal grant money to help research and develop expansion of its geothermal power plant. Funds will have to be matched by the owner Bernie Karl.
Reported today from Alaska, “The Chena Hot Springs Resort is set to receive a $1 million federal grant to help research and develop geothermal power east of Fairbanks.
The resort, owned by entrepreneur Bernie Karl, is already the site of a geothermal plant small in size but wide in reputation. It powers the resort and related heating systems warm its greenhouses.
The resort will be required to match the $1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy.
The grant, which the Energy Department made to the Fairbanks North Star Borough, is to be used to model, research and, if possible, expand the geothermal project at the hot springs, according to a proposal before the Borough Assembly.
The Assembly approved an ordinance in October accepting the federal funds. That ordinance said the borough “is actively seeking solutions to the high cost of energy” and that the purpose of the grant is to determine “whether there is a potential for traditional or enhanced geothermal system production within the borough …”
If the Assembly approves giving the funds to Karl, the money would arrive five years after Karl wrapped up work on his existing 400 kilowatt geothermal plant.
Karl said the project could mean up to five megawatts of production.
Paperwork for the grant, directed by Congress and written broadly for the borough to help Fairbanks develop a “geothermal energy project,” arrived last fall. While a number of companies showed interest, Karl’s was the only company or agency to finish the application process by the March deadline, according to an outline of the proposal.
Chena Hot Springs would match the federal grant — almost $910,000 after subtracting government administrative costs — at a dollar-for-dollar rate. The result would fund alternative energy research that Mayor Luke Hopkins said, in his spending ordinance, is “critical to the development of geothermal energy production within the (Fairbanks North Star) Borough.”
The project would fund geological modeling and environmental review, pay for a test well as deep as 2,700 feet and fund a production well almost as deep.
Source: Fairbanks Daily News – Miner
