Energy in South Australia and hotter than 150 °C can supply Australia’s total energy requirement for 26000 years. South Australia and Tasmania, where the granite basement rocks are suitable, are the main locations where geothermal energy is being developed in Australia. Sedimentary style geothermal resources have also been located near the south Victorian coastline stretching across South Australia. Geothermal energy has already been utilized commercially at two South Australian locations. Birdsville generates geothermal electricity from the hot water from the great artesian basin there, and a geothermal district heating scheme at Portland has been in use for the last twenty years, supplied by the
Hot dry rock geothermal energy hydrothermal energy production can only exploit hot fluids already in place in the earth’s crust, an HDR system (consisting of the pressurized HDR reservoir, the boreholes drilled from the surface, and the surface injection pumps and associated plumbing) recovers the earth’s heat from hot but dry regions via the closed-loop circulation of pressurized fluid. This fluid, injected from the surface under high pressure, opens pre-existing joints in the basement rock, creating a man-made reservoir which can be as much as a cubic kilometer in size. The fluid injected into the reservoir absorbs thermal energy from the high-temperature rock surfaces and