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GEOTHERMAL energy is the winner in Australia’s latest round of public funding for low-carbon energy.

Two of four successful bids from a field of 61 for money from the Australian government’s Renewable Energy Demonstration Program (REDP) are drilling deep, led by Geodynamics and Origin Energy who won A$90m ($83.5m) to complete a 25 MW project in northeast South Australia which will be the world’s first multi-well hot-rock project. Despite the project’s isolation from existing transmission infrastructure, managing director Gerry Grove-White told the Australian Geothermal Energy Conference today that the area could provide up to 10,000 MW of grid-connected generation capacity.

A bid by Petratherm, TRUEnergy and Beach Petroleum was awarded A$63m for a 30 MW engineered geothermal system, based on Petratherm’s ‘Heat exchanger within insulator’ model, to provide power to the Beverley uranium mine in mid-west South Australia. The group reported earlier this month that its second well had achieved a depth of 3864 m and would reach its planned depth of 4000 m within coming days.

Victorian Wave Partners, a group led by the Australian arm of New Jersey-based Ocean Power Technologies and construction company Leightons, gained A$66m for a 19 MW wave power demonstration project off Portland, Victoria. This will involve deployment of an array of OPT’s surface-floating PowerBuoys over an area of around 60 acres.

The Hydro-Electric Corporation, a Tasmanian Government utility, received A$15m for a project to integrate wind, solar and biodiesel energy sources with storage systems on King Island, a 424 km² island off the northwest tip of Tasmania with a population or about 2000 people which is currently dependent on diesel generated power.

REDP grants are conditional on a two-for-one investment contribution by proponents.  Solar proposals were not considered for funding but will be eligible for support through the recently-announced Australian Centre for Renewable Energy.