ORC power plants and heat pumps have played a crucial role in widening the geothermal resource base. Through these technologies, power generation and heat utilization have become possible even from low to mid-temperature geothermal resources.
During this year’s GeoTHERM in Offenburg, Germany, we stopped for a while to talk to Sara Milanesi and Sylvain Brogle of Exergy ORC to talk about their role in this market, their strength in the heat pump sector, and their approach to serving the whole value chain of geothermal projects.
Check out this quick and insightful interview!
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I’m S Milan and I head of marketing communication Exurgge International. Exurgy International is a leading provider of organic ranking cycle system with around 15 year history in the market and now uh since last year also a supplier of large pump uh series for geothermal and industrial application. So myself Silva Bugle. I am the ambassador of Exergy Worldwide. Exergy binary system uh can be sold from uh can be from 1 megawatt Hailor made power plants with turbine each turbine of around 20 megawatt. We are working now also to increase this power output to uh bigger size. Uh and uh the temperature range for our binary system ranges from 191 100° until 200 250° for application that we already made in power plants under construction or in operation.
Uh can you tell us about the heat pumps as well? Yeah, for the exit new heat pump series uh we go from small size industrial application for from around 500 kilowatt thermal until 50 uh megawatt thermal. So for large district he eat heating project. Now we are actually developing a um a a prototype of new uh technology to install in the heat pump sector and the idea is to to to grow into this segment also. Yeah, of course. If you think about it, pump is a new market, but XRG has decades of experience in thermodynamic cycle design and uh power conversion processes and integration processes and we have a strong expertise inside the company also in designing and engineering turbine and product. So considering that the heat pump system works as a reverse cycle of an OC, uh we think that internally we have the knowledge that we need to to develop a competitive and to propose to the market and develop uh a competitive product. Uh for sure we have to we have just started to to to investigate this market and to market uh this application. uh but we see a great potential in it pump uh in it pump market
and moreover we have to add that in this market for the launch of X heat we have done uh this year is that we are focusing on um high uh production power of heat pump the small heat pumps market is very busy everybody but we are working on specific alakart uh design of heat pumps and you can imagine that all these future welcome IIA data center all over the They are definitely in the need of heat pumps. Now in the in in the high enthalpy that you are having in the volcanic area of course everybody was going into the flash power production but in the flash you have the brine that you are reinjecting on very high temperature and you can easily do another uh set of power production with the brine that you’re doing and moreover there are some wells drilled in the high volcanic area that are not suitable to produce flush uh power with turbine. So the OC has a role to play in that and you have an example in many countries such as Kenya or Indonesia or or or Latin America that uh despite the flash production on power of geothermal we can install on the back overseas. Yeah. Uh last year was particularly positive for exergy for our market development in the geothermal sector. So we we signed agreement with Maras in Turkey for other two uh units. Uh so this will increase our portfolio in Turkey of more than 500 megawatt installed 550. Uh the modern project is uh 46 additional megawatt additional capacity that will bring to the Turkish market. We are just started to to work on this. Then we sign the contract for the engineering with Renco in Africa for a big project that for the supply of panor power plant for the foraria. And then just at the end of the year we close we signed a LOI with the base load capital Iceland for a small uh standard and the mod standard module for application in uh in Iceland. So so it was a positive year. Now we are working on still working on the United Dance project that we open to uh we we know that we probably started in uh during this spring. We are uh at the final stage and very exciting and interesting project and uh and working with our customer in Turkey in the Philippine with energy development corporation. So we are busy and we hope to be more busy in the coming months. So you can easily understand that reaching this point that Sahara expressed with the project ongoing is of course a result of the reshaping of our market approach. So we are not anymore any longer a turbine supplier but we become a global player and we are trying to signus and cooperation agreements with different players from the geothermal sector and this is why we have reached this stage and we are looking forward to go much further in terms of new projects upcoming with this new approach of signing cooperation agreements with a complete value chain of reactors. So uh with the decree that has her that has just started in in Italy, we hope to see uh the the market restart developing after a sort of stop that we had in the in the previous decade. Uh Italy is the credle of geothermal power. the first uh power plant was establish a strong tradition in terms of knowledge and experience in geothermal. So I am confident that uh the the the next year could be a sort of growth again of geothermal uh market in Italy and with binary system and binary technology becoming protagonist of the the sector.