Power Plant in Iceland

We visited a power plant run by the city of Reykjavik. They are open to visitors every day. Many tour groups wander through. Their public areas are full of informational displays, including many interesting wall designs, and museum like display cases.

They get their power by drilling into the magma chamber of the active volcano right behind the facility. They used groundwater from a nearby glacier which is very polluted with minerals and gasses leached from the land on it’s way to the power plant. They call this dirty ground water “geothermal liquid”. When it arrives, it is around 600 deg F. And they drill 2 kilometers down to get it. The pressure pushes it to the surface without aide. They use the geothermal liquid to heat up cleaner groundwater which they get closer to the surface. Once the cleaner water reaches 180 deg. They pipe it to Reykjavik.

The pipes are heavily insulated with rock wool – which is made from sand. The water only losses a couple of degrees in transit. At any time there is about 16,000 tons of hot water in circulation, of which 8,000 is provided by this plant. The other half is provided by 18 low temperature wells in the area.

It is used for heating houses, melting snow under sidewalks, to heat swimming pools, and even for an artificial beach. They brought in white sand from Morocco to make the beach.

If you laid out all the pipe they use in a straight line it would go as far as Italy. They use four high pressure turbines and two more outside in the back each responsible for 45 megawatts and to the side, three more responsible for 33 megawatts each. Every four years they take apart one machine to check everything over for corrosion etc.

The parts come from major corporations all over the world. There are displays in the mini theater that were given to them by such corporations as Toshiba as thanks for their business.

This plant alone produces enough electricity on it’s own to supply the whole of Iceland’s population, but only has a third of the market share. The rest is covered by hydroelectric companies. This company sells it’s excess electricity to the aluminum factories for smelting.

Their efforts to draw power from the volcano has had an impact on the volcano. It is significantly cooler since they first started, and also less active. Eventually they will have driven it into dormancy and will have to move operations to another volcano.