GE Oil & Gas re-enters geothermal business with contract in Italy

View from Santa Fiora, Tuscany (source: flickr/ To Tuscany, creative commons)

Alexander Richter 10 Jun 2016

GE Oil & Gas has announced that it will be supplying Graziella® Green Power (GGP) with technologies for next-generation power stations using geothermal energy from the Tuscan geothermal district. GGP is a leading Tuscan company in the construction and management of geothermal, photovoltaic, biomass and wind energy plants.

GE’s ORegen™ technology generates electricity using steam from below the ground (“geothermal fluids”), without any dispersal or leakage into the environment. After use, the geothermal resource – the flow of steam – can be reinjected underground in its entirety, with zero atmospheric impact. This is a new application for this technology, which has previously been used for waste heat recovery in hydrocarbon-based plants.

GE Oil & Gas will supply a complete ORegen™ system combined with a reciprocating compressor for reinjecting the gases alongside digital solutions, built on GE’s Predix technology. This will allow for the system to be monitored constantly from a monitoring and diagnostics centre at the site in Florence, together with Houston and Kuala Lumpur centres. These iCenters control rotating machinery installed all over the world and utilise the 16 million + hours of monitoring and diagnostics data available to GE technicians to advise customers.

In contrast with existing technologies, the plant built by Graziella Green Power will allow system optimisation, minimising the visual impact of the site and producing an annual energy output of 40,000 MWh renewable, clean energy, equivalent to the consumption of 14,000 families. The plant should enter the operational phase in 2018.

“GE Oil & Gas has always been in leader in the development of innovative technological solutions, thinking outside the box to drive progress in the energy industry” says Paolo Ruggeri, European Manager for the GE Oil & Gas Turbomachinery Solutions business. “This exciting partnership with Graziella Green Power allows us to apply a technology initially developed for oil and gas in a completely new way in the geothermal sector, which has great potential for the future.”

“We are committed to building plants that employ renewable energy sources and guarantee the utmost respect for the environment,” comments Iacopo Magrini, CEO of GGP. “This agreement with GE Oil & Gas helps us to do just this by giving us access to the leading expertise in the energy sector to ensure we get the results we need.”

GGP will execute the current scheme as an experimental project in the Italian Ministry of Economic Development’s first programme of investments in the geothermal sector with complete re-injection.

Source: Release via ScandOil