Blue Mountain Faulkner 1 Geothermal Power Plant is a geothermal power plant located in Humboldt County, Nevada, United States. It is owned and operated by Nevada Geothermal Power Inc.[1][2][unreliable source?] Produced electricity is sold to NV Energy through a 21-mile (34 km) 120-kV transmission line to the transmission grid connection at Mill City, Nevada.[1]
The plant was completed in October 2009. It has an installed capacity of 50 megawatts (67,000 hp). As of November 2010, the plant operated at a net output of 37 megawatts (50,000 hp). It is a binary cycle geothermal plant, which uses a closed-loop heat exchange system. In this system hot geothermal water with an average temperature of 302 °F (150 °C) heats a secondary fluid, isobutane, which is vaporized and used to run a turbine. The geothermal water is supplied by five production wells and injected by six injection wells. There is a program to add three new production wells.[1] The depth of wells is 4,000–8,000 feet (1,200–2,400 m).[2]
The technology was supplied by Ormat Technologies.[1][2] The well drilling contractors were ThermaSource and Ensign. The piping contractor was JFMPE and the reservoir engineering was handled by GeoThermEx Inc. The plant cost US$180 million, of which $57.9 million was funded under the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act.[1]
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