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Geologist Bill Glassley on board with GEO |
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Thursday, 21 May 2009 |
By Stacey Powells
Mammoth Times Staff Writer
 Mammoth Times Photo/stacey powells. Top brass from GEO (Geothermal Education and Outreach) visit the Mono County Board of Supervisors at May’s first meeting. Consultant Bill Glassley, Executive Director Tony Barrett, architect Bruce Woodward, Founder and CEO Dave Harvey and Supervisor Byng Hunt.
Some of that heat bubbles and boils in the ground just outside town where the geothermal electric plant converts underground hot water to 40 megawatts of electricity each year to be sold to Southern California Electric.
On five acres adjacent to the plant, Geothermal Education and Outreach (GEO) has plans for an interpretive center and living laboratory “to study greenhouse production at high altitude and to explore further the viability and value of geothermal heat as an energy source,” said Glassley, who is a new consultant with GEO.
Glassley agrees that the site will become an important foundation to further the study of geothermal energy both locally and globally.
“Where they [GEO’s CEO Dave Harvey and director Tony Barrett] want to build the center would have a significant positive impact for the region, state and nation,” Glassley said during his Power Point presentation to the supervisors.
If it comes to fruition, Glassley anticipates that the GEO center will be the ‘hotspot’ for scientists all over the world to come and study geothermal energy.
“It will be a training center that will provide the skills required to design, engineer and install renewable energy systems,” Glassley said.
He went on to explain that the potential exists to transform agricultural practices using a combination of deep wells, recirculated water, large-scale greenhouse facilities and ground-source heat pumps; and that GEO will be at the forefront of research in these areas. GEO would provide a home for applying the best practices for deploying the technologies, and engineering means for improving technology performance in the world of geothermal energy, Glassley said.
Glassley’s Power Point also suggests that the immediate benefits would be the ability for GEO to capture some of the currently missed visitor traffic by making GEO a world-class visitor’s center. Visitors will also have the ability to peek behind the closed laboratory doors and actually see what happens in a geothermal lab.
In the long-term, GEO could become one of the world’s “go to” places for energy technology training for the next generation of renewable energy researchers.
“This is an opportunity we don’t want to miss and, from the beginning, we intend to concentrate on how this project will pay for itself,” said GEO founder Dave Harvey. “I’m the last person in the room who wants a white elephant or to have a facility where we have to keep going outside for funding.”
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 30 May 2009 )
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