News

Raser about to transmit power to city of Anaheim

Alexander Richter 5 Mar 2009

Geothermal energy developer Raser Technologies, Inc. has completed final preparations needed to transmit power to the city of Anaheim, Calif. beginning as early as next week.

Based on a company announcement, “Geothermal energy developer Raser Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: RZ) has completed final preparations needed to transmit power to the city of Anaheim, Calif. beginning as early as next week. Raser will deliver power to Anaheim from its first commercial-scale geothermal power plant in Beaver County, Utah.

The commissioning date was extended while the local utility in Utah completed the installation of the SCADA [supervisory control And data acquisition] equipment needed to monitor transmissions on the grid. Raser has already been supplying about 3.5 MW of sustained power generated at the plant to the local utility while final preparations were completed. Raser plans to ramp up the amount of power delivered to Anaheim over the next few weeks.

“We are very pleased with the progress that we have made to date and believe that commissioning of the plant has gone very much in line with expectations,” said Steven Brown, executive vice president of Raser. “While there may be minor modifications needed from time to time, the plant is now ready to complete its ramp up. We have operated all of the UTC units over an extended period and I have been very pleased with their performance as well as the level of dedication the team has shown to complete the work on the project.

“Once we have the final production well linked to the plant, we expect to be able to ramp up to the 10 to 11 MW net capacity. We expect to be ramped up to about 7 MW and begin sending the power to Anaheim by the end of next week.”

Brent M. Cook, CEO of Raser, said, “Raser is achieving something that has never been done before in the power generation industry, and in record time. Steve and his team have done a terrific job in putting together the first truly modular commercial geothermal power plant in such a short period of time. All of the generators and components within the plant have now been proven-out in operation and performed above our expectations. We look forward to completing the ramping up process and expect to be at full capacity within the next few weeks.”

Source: company announcement via energycurrent.com