Federal Scholarship

Applications for the $5,000 Horstman Postgraduate Scholarship are now open. Find the details here

Loading Events

« All Events

  • This event has passed.

LIVE WEBINAR: Hot Sedimentary Aquifer (HSA) Exploration and Development in Australia

Tuesday, 4 October, 2022 @ 11:00 am - 12:00 pm (Australia/Perth time)

Free – $10.00

To view the event video and associated handouts (if any), please either log in to your active PESA membership account or enter the event password you received when you registered for this event.

Guest Speaker(s): Trey Meckel (Monteverde Energy/Groundbreaking Energy/Australian Geothermal Association)

Dr Lawrence (Trey) Meckel is an experienced leader in the global energy industry, and an expert in alternative energy, decarbonization, and oil and gas. During his career, spanning more than 30 years, he has identified, matured, commercialized, and operated energy projects in Australia, SE Asia, North America, South America, and Africa.

He began his career with Shell and Woodside, as was VP of Exploration of Latin America’s largest energy company from 2017-2022. Presently, Dr. Meckel is CO2 Storage Project Manager at CO2CRC, Australia’s leading CCS organization. He is also the founder of Monteverde Energy, where he is involved in geothermal projects in Western Australia and the USA, and co-founder of Groundbreaking Energy, a geothermal exploration company.

Other roles include Secretary of the Australian Geothermal Association and Tutor at the University of Cambridge (UK) Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL), training senior executives across multiple sectors in net-zero strategies.

Kindly supported by Rock Flow dynamics

 

This live webinar will take place at:

11am              – Perth
12.30pm       – Darwin
1pm                – Brisbane
1:30pm          – Adelaide
2pm                – Canberra, Hobart, Melbourne, Sydney

Use the calendar link on this page to add this event in to your own calendar at the correct local time for your location.

Tickets are free for members (please log in to see this) and $10 for non members.

Please buy your tickets and immediately follow the link in the ticket e-mail (not the calendar invite or this webpage, which is just generic and not event specific) to set up your registration with the webinar software well in advance of the time of the talk. Once registered with the webinar software you will receive a reminder e-mail 1 hour beforehand.

Hot Sedimentary Aquifer (HSA) Exploration and Development in Australia

Presented by Trey Meckel (Monteverde Energy/Groundbreaking Energy/Australian Geothermal Association)

Abstract

Geothermal energy from Hot Sedimentary Aquifers (HSA) has significant potential in Australia. To date, the potential has been realized in multiple, small-scale (1-2.5 MW-th), direct use projects in the Perth Basin in Western Australia (WA) and in the Otway and Gippsland Basins in Victoria (VIC). These projects were limited by demand, not resource; current projects, planned at scales of 5-25 MW-th, include large-scale greenhouse projects in WA, aquaculture in VIC, and district heating in South Australia.

In contrast, commercial power generation has been more elusive. The Birdsville power plant in Queensland successfully generated 80 kW-e for ~20 years, but other attempts to realize the potential, such as the Salamander-1 (2010) and Celsius-1 (2011) exploration wells and the Winton power project in Queensland, were, or are currently, commercially unviable. These latter projects represent significant learnings for the Australian geothermal industry, analogous to ‘dry holes’ in oil and gas exploration.

Based on these learnings, certain areas can be high-graded for HSA energy exploration, appraisal, and development. Most notably, Strike Energy, holding a Geothermal Special Prospecting Area (GSPA) over much of the northern Perth Basin (NPB), has recently announced an Inferred Resource of approximately 226 MW-e (P50) in the Kingia Sandstone, which is anomalously porous and permeable at depths where the reservoir has proven temperatures greater than 150°C. If commerciality is confirmed by further appraisal, this resource could contribute to decarbonizing fertilizer (Project Haber), oil and gas, mining, and other operations in the region, as well as providing reliable, on-demand power.

This talk will review the relevant history of HSA projects in Australia and then provide an up-to-date look at new efforts to exploit HSA in Australia, including recent high-impact exploration bid rounds in multiple states.

Details

Date:
Tuesday, 4 October, 2022
Time:
11:00 am - 12:00 pm
(Australia/Perth time)
Cost:
Free – $10.00
Event Categories:
  • Organisers

    PESA Western Australia
    PESA Webinars

    Registration Details

    Please select the number of tickets you wish to purchase and then press the "Get Tickets" button.

    Tickets

    The numbers below include tickets for this event already in your cart. Clicking "Get Tickets" will allow you to edit any existing attendee information as well as change ticket quantities.
    Non member
    $ 10.00 inc GST