Geothermal

Pilot project aims to power small Canadian town entirely with geothermal energy

Pilot project aims to power small Canadian town entirely with geothermal energy
(Image by Hans from Pixabay)

E2E Energy Solutions and the municipality of Rainbow Lake, Alberta are announcing what they call a first-of-its-kind pilot project meant to power and heat the community using only geothermal renewable energy sources by 2028.

This project relies on E2E’s patent-pending Enhanced Geothermal Reservoir Recovery System (EGRRS). This process aims to allow for large-scale geothermal development by upgrading the temperature of saline aquifers to be commercially viable where conventional exploitation methods do not work. The Rainbow Lake project will be completed in three phases which include the EGRRS pilot, construction of a surface geothermal facility, and design and installation of the required infrastructure within the community.

If the project is successful, the district of Rainbow Lake will be entirely powered by geothermal energy. Rainbow Lake has a land area of 4.15 square miles, around 350 private houses, and a 2021 population of 495.

“The Town of Rainbow Lake has been researching the vast geothermal potential our Northwest corner of Alberta provides for 6 years now,” Rainbow Lake Mayor Michelle Farris said. “We are happy to have found a valuable partner in E2E Energy Solutions to help bring all of these past years of study into a tangible future.”

E2E says geothermal energy is an underutilized renewable energy source in Canada due to economic and technical limitations associated with conventional geothermal extraction processes, and it hopes its process has an impact on the future of commercialized geothermal energy in the country.

Driven by the EGRRS technology, this project will receive technical support from the University of Calgary’s Energi Simulation Centre for Geothermal Systems Research (GeoS), a geothermal research Centre in Canada. GeoS committed to a partnership with E2E to develop a research support program towards various aspects of the implementation including lending expertise towards system, modeling, and operations optimization.