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GEA Expo & GRC Annual Meeting 2011 close with record attendance

GEA Expo & GRC Annual Meeting 2011 close with record attendance Opening Session at the GRC Annual Meeting 2011 in San Diego, California (source: flickr/ thinkgeoenergy, creative commons)
Alexander Richter 1 Nov 2011

The largest annual geothermal energy event, joining the GRC Annual Meeting and the GEA Geothermal Energy Expo, took place last week in San Diego, California and saw a record attendance with more than 2,500 attendees and 160 exhibitors. ThinkGeoEnergy took lots of pictures and posted them on Flickr.

Last week more than 2,500 attendees representing the U.S. and international geothermal energy industry came together for the 35th Annual Meeting of the Geothermal Resources Council and the Geothermal Energy Association’s Annual Geothermal Energy Expo.

The event saw a record attendance not only for the conference part itself, but also with 160 exhibitors at the trade show.

Companies represented at the trade show included companies, such as Ormat, NALCO, Siemens, Geothermal Resource Group, POWER Engineers, Íslandsbanki, Pratt & Whitney Power Systems, Mitsubishi Power Systems, Contact Energy, TNG Energy Services, Scientific Drilling, Baker Hughes, Schlumberger and many many more. The event provided a unique opportunity for exhibitors to showcase their projects, equipment, services and state of the art technology to the geothermal community.

The United States is the world leader in geothermal generation, with approximately 3,100 MW online. And a new map from Southern Methodist University’s Geothermal Lab, created with help from a grant from Google’s philanthropic arm Google.org, estimates the U.S. could potentially generate nearly three million megawatts using the Earth’s heat, or about ten times the installed capacity of coal power. Since 2005, geothermal power projects have expanded from 4 states into 15 states from the Pacific to the Gulf Coast. While the number of states with geothermal installed capacity and projects in development is significant, the reach of the geothermal industry is even more extensive. A total of 43 states have companies involved in geothermal development operations. With the growth of the geothermal industry, the Expo has been rapidly expanding, with the number of exhibitors more than doubling since 2008.

ThinkGeoEnergy will follow up in the weeks to come with interviews and insights from the meeting. For now you can find pictures of the trade show before opening and from the opening session of both the trade show and the GRC Annual Meeting at: www.flickr.com/thinkgeoenergy

 

I would like to thank GEA and GRC for the support while the event in San Diego and the many companies that gave me some time to learn more about their activities.