In a recent article on how the East African country of Tanzania can learn from geothermal power house Iceland, various elements are mentioned on how the country could and should develop its geothermal resources.

One point in particular was raised which relates to speed up development and provide a better understanding of resources and further development.

The article describes that “development of geothermal field from the exploration phase to full convectional power plant (with exclusion of wellhead generation) can take several years ranging from five to nine years and also requires a lot of resources since geothermal development are an expensive venture. In some countries like Kenya, a new concept of wellhead generation has been adopted. This concept enables project owner to generate power within a year and relieve itself from the long wait for the conventional power plant development period.”

Speaking with Icelandic experts, there clearly is an understanding that a “stepwise resource development is the best mode to understand the geothermal resource, power plants as small as a few tens of Megawatts can be economically built to start generation.”

With GEG’s experience in the delivery and construction of geothermal wellhead plants, the stepwise approach can be achieved through single individual units or a modular approach with several units on one well pad, providing flexibility with regards to the size of development.