Learning about Lava & Geothermal Energy

Today we visited the Hellisheiồi Power Plant, the largest geothermal power plant in Iceland (and second largest in the world after the Geysers complex in California—near Calistoga). There was a lot to learn!

Geothermal energy accounts for 30% of Iceland's electricity generation, and nearly 70% comes from hydropower.

Iceland is a major producer of aluminum, contributing to around 2% of global production, due to their cheap and clean energy source used for this energy-intensive manufacturing process.

The Iceland Deep Drilling Project is an international research collaboration to extract heat from much deeper geothermal wells. If it is successful, it will expand the power output of geothermal plants from around 5 MW today to 30-50 MW per well.

They are also successfully capturing the CO2 emissions from geothermal energy production and binding them into stone to store underground.

Later, at the Lava Center museum, they had a great exhibit on the hot spots in Iceland, and the different kinds of eruptions that occur. The eruption in 2010 that disabled air traffic in Europe for a week resulted from a volcano that erupted beneath a glacier. The temperature difference makes for very explosive eruptions, sending lots of ash and particles into the air, in addition to lava flows. There are 130 volcanoes in Iceland—and the country is the same size as Kentucky. Most of the biggest volcanoes are under glaciers, so flooding is a bigger concern than lava.

At the end of the day, we got to walk behind Seljalandsfoss waterfall (and got much wetter than our walk behind the waterfall at Silver Falls in Oregon!).Read more