Iceland is digging the deepest geothermal well on the planet in the heart of a volcano that has a depth of 5 kilometers to take advantage of its renewable energy.
And it is that the extreme pressure and heat existing at those depths could derive 30 to 50 MW of electricity from a single geothermal well. Iceland is the world leader in the use of geothermal energy and produces about 26 percent of its electricity from geothermal sources.
The installed generation capacity of geothermal power plants was total of 665 MW in 2013 and the production was 5.245 GWh.
A typical 2,5 kilometer geothermal well in Icelandic fields is the energy equivalent of approximately 5 MW. Scientists expect a increment by ten in the outstanding energy of the well when drilling deeper into the crust of the earth. At a depth of 5 kilometers, extreme pressure and heat above 500 degrees Celsius will create "supercritical smoke" that will substantially increase the efficiency of the turbine.
A joint venture by Statoil and Iceland Deep Drilling Project (IDDP), the world's hottest geothermal well, is currently being drilled. on the Reykjanes peninsula, where a volcano last erupted 700 years ago.
Un similar attempt six years ago ended in disaster, with the drill rig touching the magma at a depth of 2,1 kilometers, destroying the drill string. Ásgeir margeirsson, CEO of the parent project HS Orka, said:
There is no guarantee that things are going well, at such depths everything could turn into a disaster in a matter of seconds. All of this can have an unexpected end, because for some reason it cannot be drilled deeper. We do not expect to touch magma, but we will be drilling in warm rock. And by warm rock, we mean 400 to 500 degrees Celsius.
For the next 7 years IDDP plans are drill and test a series of wells that will penetrate supercritical zones believed to be present under three already exploited geothermal fields in Iceland.