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First-in-Canada geothermal power plant to begin construction in south Sask.

The Deep Earth Energy Production Company (DEEP) has achieved a significant milestone in its testing and development of geothermal power resources in southeast Saskatchewan and will begin work this year on Canada’s first geothermal plant.

The Deep Earth Energy Production Company (DEEP) has achieved a significant milestone in its testing and development of geothermal power resources in southeast Saskatchewan and will begin work this year on Canada’s first geothermal plant.

“We have been able to announce that the project is a go and that we now have a strategy in place to commence construction this year,” said Kirsten Marcia, founder and CEO of DEEP, headquartered in Saskatoon.

“The important thing about geothermal is that it’s the only renewable that provides baseload power. It’s always on, and you don’t need to back it up with something,” Marcia explained. “Wind and solar are only producing power about a third of the time, so you need to back them up with natural gas, typically.”

Marcia founded DEEP in 2010 in Saskatoon. She is a geologist who has worked her entire career in Saskatchewan. She worked in oil and gas as a wellsite geologist, with gold and base metals in northern Sask, and in diamond exploration.

“For oil and gas exploratory drilling, I mean, it was well known that this hot, deep aquifer existed. We were able to see all of that in public drilling records, but it had been ignored because it didn’t have any hydrocarbons in it,” Marcia said.

“It was a unique opportunity to redeploy some of (Saskatchewan’s) high-level oil and gas expertise onto a clean energy project.”

Geothermal power works because the core of the planet is hot — really hot. The deeper the well, the hotter the temperature.

“Heat is the resource,” Marcia explained. “But we need fluid to bring that resource to the surface, so it’s key in our project that the sedimentary sandstone we’re developing this resource in is permeable.”

The groundwater in that deep sandstone aquifer is under high pressure, at an average temperature of 120 degrees Celsius. DEEP will drill down and install a horizontal, ribcage-like network of pipes at a depth of 3.5 km.

Hot, briny fluid — it can’t be called ‘water’ because it is 10 times saltier than seawater — will be pumped to the surface and pass through a heat exchanger, where it will flash a lower-density liquid, typically butane, into steam to drive a generator turbine. The cooled water is then pumped back underground to be re-heated, resulting in the ideal of clean, sustainable power generation.

Excess heat can also be easily used — for example, it could heat greenhouses for year-round food production.

DEEP has completed multiple rounds of fundraising as study after study confirmed the feasibility of the project, including a 2014 prefeasibility study funded in partnership with SaskPower and Natural Resources Canada.

DEEP secured an initial Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with SaskPower in 2017, set a Saskatchewan record in 2018 with a test well depth of 3,530 meters, and secured more than $25 million in federal funding in 2019 after the prime minister personally toured the test facility near Estevan.

In 2022, DEEP was named the Exceptional Engineering/Geoscience Project award winner by the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Saskatchewan (APEGS).

“Our goal is to develop 200 MW of geothermal power. We are starting with a preliminary 5 MW pilot facility to (test) … on the small scale prior to building large-scale commercial developments,” Marcia said. “The geology that we’re developing in southeast Saskatchewan is the lowest-hanging fruit for geothermal power generation in Canada, and we control 100,000 acres of the primary real estate.”

Marcia said the 5MW facility will be complete by mid-2024 and will be followed by an additional 20 MW of expanded capacity at that same initial site.

More information is available at deepcorp.ca.

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