Geothermal explorer reveals inferred resource at Penola  

The Adelaide Advertiser has an article on a company aiming to have Australia's first grid-connected geothermal power plant operational by 2011, ahead of front-runner GeoDynamics - Geothermal explorer reveals inferred resource at Penola.

HOT rocks explorer Panax Geothermal has revealed 41,000 petajoules of inferred resource at its Penola tenement in the State's South East. The company said 5 per cent of the inferred resource could be classified as a measured resource - sufficient to operate a 200 MWe geothermal base-load power plant for 30 years, subject to a full feasibility study.

Panax aims to have Australia's first grid-connected geothermal power plant operational by 2011. Its application for a $7 million drilling grant from the Federal Goverment also had been upgraded to a full merit assessment, executive director Kerry Parker said.

Mr Parker said the company was "quietly confident'' of grant approval which would see drilling at Salamander 1 in the advanced Penola Project, part of the company's limestone Coast geothermal project in SA, start by mid 2009. He said Panax was the only hot sedimentary aquifer project in Australia to reveal a measured resource highlighting Panax's advanced status.

Hot fractured rock explorer Geodynamics has Australia's most advanced project near Innamincka in the State's far north.