Ormat Technologies Starts Construction in Nevada of 20-Megawatt Geothermal Plant with Plans for Expansion

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Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources, Incorporated; Houston, Texas). Ormat Nevada, Incorporated, a subsidiary of 40 year old renewable resources developer Ormat Technologies, Incorporated (NYSE:ORA) (Reno, Nevada) has started construction on the 20-megawatt (MW) Galena Geothermal Project. When Galena 1 is completed, it will be added to the existing Steamboat geothermal plants and increase the electrical capacity to 44 MW. It is the first geothermal power plant to be built at Steamboat, Nevada, south of Reno, since 1991.

Galena 1 consists of two 10 MW units that will produce electricity for about 20,000 households. Construction of the 13 MW Galena 2 is planned to follow with approval of permits and finance. The electricity is generated through a Binary Cycle process that extracts and re-injects the hot geothermal waters from the ground. The hot water is passed through a heat exchanger that heats up a secondary fluid, which flashes at a lower boiling point. The vapor is then sent through a turbo-expander/generator set, then condensed, and sent back to the heat exchanger in a continuous cycle. This is called renewable energy because it is using the water from the wells over and over.

Sierra Pacific Power Company, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sierra Pacific Resources (NYSE:SRP) (Reno, Nevada) has agreed to purchase the output, just as it has with other geothermal plants since the mid-1980s. Ormat owns and operates four other geothermal plants at Steamboat, the oldest of which has been in operation since 1986. Sierra Pacific Power purchases approximately 95-megawatts of electricity from geothermal sources in northern Nevada and plans to increase that by 30 MW power under contract with Ormat Nevada by the fourth quarter of 2006.

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