State to Get Out of Geothermal Business

The state Department of Water Resources said Thursday that it will get out of the geothermal energy business.

The state will shut down its power plants at Bottle Rock and South Geysers, near Calistoga, in Northern California. Steam wells had powered the Bottle Rock facility since 1985; South Geysers was never considered productive.

The Bottle Rock facility, before power production ended there in September, was feeding a relatively small 7 megawatts of electrical power into the distribution system of Pacific Gas & Electric Co.

Private geothermal producers contacted Thursday saw this as no big setback to development of geothermal power. Both Unocal Corp. and the Northern California Power Agency, a 14-city consortium, have successful operations in the same geothermal field.

“The fact of the matter is that the state doesn’t know how to run an energy company,” said Bob Taggart, senior vice president for external affairs for San Francisco-based California Energy Co., the leading U.S. independent geothermal producer.

California Energy Co. operates several power plants, including one at China Lake in the Southern California desert.

“We have a facility there that is cranking out 240 megawatts,” Taggart said. “That supplies all electrical needs for 250,000 households.”

One technician familiar with the state’s wells said Thursday that they had always been “marginal” steam producers, on the edge of the well field.

They had also been plagued by caustic hydrogen sulfide gas, which corrodes metal pipe casings.

“They were just in a bad part of the field,” he said.

About 7% of all electricity used in California is currently produced by geothermal wells.