Geothermal Energy Resources and Power Plants in China

Aside from Taiwan, experts from Mainland China also shared their experiences and updates on the development and history of geothermal energy in China, in the 30th Geothermal Conference in Manila, Philippines. Mr. Z. Han and K. Zheng of the Geothermal China Energy Society (GCES) shared their experiences and thoughts

Almost similar to Taiwan, Geothermal energy in China has a negligible contribution to the energy supply of the country. Considering the China’s massive electricity consumption, it has only around 25.18 MW of electricity coming from geothermal sources or equivalent only to 140 GWh of energy in 2008. This is merely 0.0041% of China’s electricity consumption of 3.427 Million Gigawatt-hours (GWh) in 2008 [China Electricity Council (CEC)].

Though the development of geothermal energy in China has been overwhelmingly overtaken by other conventional energy sources, there are efforts to continue the development of this technology. There are, actually, 3,000 exploratory wells drilled in the various locations in China. However, survey of the resources showed that the temperature of the reservoir is suitable only to a binary cycle plant - temperature of the resources ranged from only 90 deg C to 120 deg C. They called this “Geothermal Water”. On the positive side, there is some resource in Yuan – Tibet area which is suitable for conventional geothermal power plant.

Though researches showed that there might be around 100,000 MWe of geothermal energy available in China by 2050, the forecast of geothermal energy production in the future is still very small;
• 75 MW in 2020
• 200 MW in 2030
• 500 MW in 2050

History of Geothermal Energy development in China
It is interesting to note that in as early as 1970 there were already power plants that operated using geothermal energy in China, mostly located in the Tibet Area. The geothermal resource, however, is at very low temperature of less than 100 deg C. Also, Power Plants are all less than 1 MW in capacity and probably using binary cycle technology due to very low temperature of the “geothermal water”.

Conclusion
The geothermal resource in China, as researches have shown, is not as good as the resources in other geothermal producing countries but still, there is a potential available for exploration and development. However, it is notable that the development of geothermal energy in China did not develop quite well in the past decades, the presenters in the GeoCon concluded.

Filed in: Geothermal Energy
Local date: March, 2010

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