It always amazes me how boring the “Feeling Lucky” search is on google. It is supposed to evoke the sounds and site of Dirty Harry “Well, are you feeling luck punk”. But it is about as dazzling as well a good yawn. Hot Rocks – slang name for deep well geothermal energy extraction was once, well, as the name implies HOT. There were two major Hot Rocks projects going on at the time of my last report (I know I know I will put in a track back when I get the chance) sometime last year. But then there was an earthquake in Austria or Switzerland…where ever the European endeavor was and it all got real quiet. The Earthquake was blamed on the Deep Well Drilling, but i never saw definitive proof. So I typed in Hot Rocks at Feeling Lucky and got this:

http://hotrocksband.tripod.com/

Hot Rocks Rolling Stones Tribute Show complete with the sound, the look and the energy!
‘Best in the Midwest’ as selected by Paramount-Stones-Scorsese-!
Best of  the Burbs finalist 4x in Nitelife Magazine contest

A freaking cover band;

Just to remind everyone this is what the original report dealt with:

http://www.swissinfo.org/eng/front/detail/swissinfo.html?siteSect=105&sid=7407138

Geothermal project shakes Basel again

Related stories

• 09.12.2006
  Man-made tremor shakes Basel
• 18.10.2006
  Switzerland prepares for seismic calamity
• 04.09.2006
  Conference highlights earthquake threat

Basel has been rocked by another earth tremor, this time measuring 3.1 on the Richter scale, centred on the site of a planned geothermal power plant.

This time buildings stood up to the force unlike the minor damage inflicted by a small earthquake in December that clocked a reading of 3.4. Nobody was hurt in either of the two incidents.

The latest tremor took place at 08.19 on Saturday, prompting around 40 residents to call the emergency services.

Work on the Deep Heat Mining project stopped last month following a series of tremors and will not resume until at least the end of January when experts are expected to conclude their analysis.

:}

Just to bring you up to what is happening:

http://www.caribbeannetnews.com/news-11991–35-35–.html

UWI finds no correlation between geothermal project and earthquakes on Nevis
Published on Wednesday, November 5, 2008
CHARLESTOWN, Nevis: Chief Executive Office of West Indies Power (Nevis) Ltd, (WIP) Kerry McDonald expressed confidence in the University of the West Indies (UWI) Seismic Research Unit (SRU) scientific findings, which corroborated WIP scientific conclusion of no known correlation between the series of earthquakes which recently occurred on Nevis, and the approved geothermal project contracted to WIP. Chief Executive Officer of West Indies Power Limited Kerry McDonald In a joint press briefing held on Monday with Director and Manager of the Nevis Disaster Management Office Lester Blackett, Mcdonald cleared the air when he made the following statement and assured the people of Nevis that drilling activities were not linked to the earthquakes, another respected analysis by the regions research institution studying volcanic and earthquake activity at Arc-level. “The drilling WIP has been doing on the west side of the Island had nothing to do with the earthquake that occurred. First of all, let me say that there was no correlation between the two activities. “In fact, we were not drilling for over one week on the west side of the Island. As you know, this earthquake was 11 miles off of the eastern side of the island close to the tectonic plate, where all the seismic activity has been and that’s pretty much the same region that all seismic activity that has affected Nevis has been located and that included the 1952 earthquake. This earthquake was at 22 miles depth and this was where the earthquake came from. The deepest well that we [WIP] have drilled is 3,720 feet,” McDonald said.

:}

They seem to be going great guns in Australia though

http://www.hotrockltd.com/irm/Content/home.html

Hot Rock Limited – Clean electricity at competitive cost The world is poised for a major expansion in geothermal generation.  Geothermal uses natural heat from the Earth’s crust to make electricity.  It is clean and has high growth potential. We created Hot Rock Limited to be a leader in geothermal generation.  Geothermal is a unique intersection of natural resource development with electricity generation. Hot Rock Limited is the largest holder of geothermal exploration acreage in Australia.

Otway Basin geothermal project, Victoria, Australia

Hot Rock Limited’s Otway Basin geothermal resources in Victoria are large. They are located in the middle of a large population base of 5 million people with a major 500 kV electrical transmission system nearby. Hot Rock has already completed the largest MT geophysical survey for geothermal to date in Australia over a part of this resource. More

Why geothermal?

The world is readily embracing new clean energy sources. We have seen rapid growth in wind generation and coal seam gas production over the past decade. Geothermal electricity generation is now poised to grow rapidly too. More

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/jan09/7077

Geodynamics is turning Australia’s natural radioactivity into the country’s first geothermal power plants

This is part of IEEE Spectrum‘s SPECIAL REPORT: WINNERS & LOSERS 2009, The Year’s Best and Worst of Technology.

Photo: Geodynamics

Dream Steam: A new kind of geothermal system in Australia’s desert holds great promise for clean electricity generation.

Four kilometers down below the orange earth of Australia’s Cooper Basin lies some of the hottest nonvolcanic rock in the world—rock that the geothermal industry had never seriously considered using to make electricity. But next month Geodynamics, an eight-year-old company based in Milton, Queensland, will prove otherwise when it turns on its 1?megawatt pilot plant here. The company has done more to harness this unconventional form of geothermal energy than anyone else in the world.

Geodynamics picked a place in the middle of Australia with a smattering of trees, a mostly dry riverbed, and a town with a population of about 14. Even in the best circumstances, building a geothermal power plant is a risky endeavor: drilling costs money, and divining what’s going on in the depths of the Earth is still something of a black art. Here, geothermal companies must clear yet another hurdle. The world’s 10 000-MW collection of geothermal power plants exploits existing underground reservoirs of water and steam. Australia’s geoscientists, by contrast, must create their own.

This very experimental technology is known as an engineered geothermal system, or EGS. If it works—and the finances and expertise at Geodynamics’ disposal suggest that it will—heat from deep under the outback could contribute a few gigawatts of clean round-the-clock power, up to 20 percent of Australia’s capacity today. And if it works here, many other countries will want to give it a whirl.

In the last few years, the concept of geothermal energy has undergone a dramatic reshaping to include a broad range of geological conditions not normally deemed useful. In the United States, for example, EGS could potentially contribute as much as 100 000 MW of electricity in the next 50 years, according to an MIT report released in 2006. Today conventional geothermal capacity in the United States amounts to about 3000 MW, less than half of a percent of the country’s total electric capacity. In famously geothermal Iceland it comes to 450 MW—about one-fourth of the island’s total. Australia’s use of geothermal heat is basically nil.

:}

Good luck mates.

:}