In the south part of Iceland, near Flúðir, a new power plant was commissioned in the beginning of 2019. The power plant is based on binary cycle, that has an organic working fluid in a Rankine cycle. EFLA was the main consultant in the project, with regards to geothermal and mechanical engineering.
The installed capacity for the power plant is 600 kW in the first phase, and the second phase plans to extend the power plant to 1.2 MW. The electricity is distributed to the local net.
Increased utilization
The electricity is generated with four Climeon units. The units are connected in serial and lower the temperature of the geothermal water from 115°C to 80°C. The geothermal water has therefore temperature that is well suited for district heating system.
The powerplant is one of the first in Iceland to utilize low temperature geothermal resource to generate electricity. The Climeon technology has high efficiency that makes the utilization of low temperature geothermal resources economical feasible.
This will increase the utilization of the geothermal resources.
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Electricity is generated by using low temperature geothermal resource
Future
The Icelandic company Varmaorka is the owner of the project and the Swedish company Climeon provides the ORC units that generate the electricity. There are large number of locations in Iceland that have low temperature geothermal resource that could be utilized with the Climeon technology to generate electricity. Varmaorka has plans to expand to 10 to 15 locations in Iceland in the coming years.
Pure Knowledge
EFLA engineers has extended experience and knowledge in utilization of geothermal resources and has been involved in large number of projects.