U.S. Geothermal Facitly near Malta, ID

After leaving the City Rocks in southern Idaho - where Jeff and Laura tried rock climbing for their first time at the internationally acclaimed destination for climbers - the crew drove 45 minutes down a dirt road to meet with the local organizer, Rich Carlson, and some Idaho Rural Council members at the northwestern United States' first geothermal plant. Finished in 2006, the facility can legally produce up to 11 megawatts of power within the closed loop system.

The place lies in a unique geologic region. The area contains both hot and cold water aquifers. With these resources, the plant uses the hot water to turn the turbines and the cold water to cool the water before returning the used water to the ground, where the facility will again use the water in a future date. The plant draws the hot water from nearly a mile under ground and pipelines run a quarter mile or more to deliver and return water to and from the production facility. The varied temperatures of water and outside temps cause the pipelines to expand and contract up to 5 feet, so the pipes do not go directly to the plant; the pipes make many 90 deg and 70 deg turns along the way to the plant.



The facility continues to expand and the production limits continue to increase. Even now, the plant could produce more power than 11 MW, but the laws and Idaho Electric hold the production levels back. Evidentially, Idaho Electric gets most of their electricity really cheap because they produce their own power. Purchasing from another party increases the price. Idaho Electric purchases the geothermal power only because laws dictate that electricity companies must buy a certain percentage of clean power. This plant falls under the category of clean energy, along with many others, and if the laws stay in favor of green energy - companies will continue to produce more and more. Without the mandates, nobody can no how long the market will take to introduce clean power.