INDIA:GEO THERMAL ENERGY DEVELOPMENT

INDIA: co-operation with Iceland for progress in geothermal energy development

15 Jan 2010 17:12 IST
Dr. Farooq Abdullah, Union Minister of New and Renewable Energy has said that bilateral co-operation with Iceland is essential to make progress in the area of geothermal energy development. Addressing the India-Iceland workshop on Renewable Energy in New Delhi today, he listed out areas likely for cooperation between the two countries including technology transfer on deep drilling, reservoir assessment and setting up of geothermal demonstration power plants.

The chief guest at the inaugural session of the workshop was Dr. Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, President of Iceland. Ms. Preneet Kaur, Minister of State for External Affairs and Dr. R. K. Pachauri, DG – TERI and Chairman – IPCC also participated in the workshop.

Iceland being well recognized by UNESCO to provide training in geothermal energy development should consider training a group of Indian engineers and scientists on all the aspects of geothermal energy utilization, Dr Abdullah said.

The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy organized the India-Iceland Workshop on Renewable Energy with focus on development and utilization of Geothermal Energy and Small Hydro Power.

Iceland’s success in the utilization of locally available renewable energy sources, especially the geothermal energy and hydro power, has contributed substantially to its economy. Iceland is one among the top six countries in the world in utilization of geothermal energy with installed power generating capacity of about 575 MW against global geothermal power generating capacity of about 10,500 MW. In addition, geothermal heat meets the heating and hot water requirements of about 87% of Iceland’s housing.

India has high temperature geothermal fields with temperature of about 250 oC at Puga in Jammu and Kashmir and Tattapani in Chhattisgarh. There are some medium temperature resources with temperature of about 150oC in the states like Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, Maharashtra, Gujarat etc. The workshop discussed issues relating to cooperation between India and Iceland for development of geothermal sector in India by assessing the geothermal resources and its utilization for power generation and thermal applications. About 100 delegates from India and Iceland participated in the workshop.

The workshop also deliberated on cooperation in the area of small hydro power sector. So far about 700 small hydropower projects aggregating to 2,558 MW have been set up in various parts of India and 290 projects of about 900 MW are in various stages of implementation. The total installed hydropower capacity in Iceland is about 2400 MW.