Manchester’s geothermal plant set for approval
A DUBLIN company is expected to get the go-ahead next week to start work in Manchester on what could become the UK’s first large-scale geothermal plant.
It wants to harness heat from hot water 3,200 metres below Ardwick and plans to start by drilling two exploratory boreholes that would subsequently be used as operational wells.
GT Energy believes its multi-million pound project could be the focus of a low-carbon economic zone in the area, as well as help to drive down energy costs for local people.
It has partnered with the German energy company E.ON to tap a natural energy reservoir beneath the city known as the Cheshire Basin from a council-owned plot of land on the corner of Devonshire Street and Coverdale Crescent, close to the O2 Apollo venue.
The project will take up around an acre of land in the area during development. Once complete, the plant will sit on half an acre of land. It will take around a year to build and a pair of 40m-high drilling rigs will be in place for around six months.
A planning application, recommended for approval at a meeting on Thursday, details two 75cm vertical bore holes to 500 metres. Deeper drilling would require additional permissions. One hole would be used to extract the water which would pass through a heat exchanger, based in an underground energy centre, to extract the heat. The water would be pumped back through the second hole.
GT Energy said the plants are commonplace in Europe, with 34 in Paris alone. There is only one existing plant in the UK, however, which is in Southampton and is much smaller in scale. It was built in 1981.
In its publicity material about the project GT said: “The project will be one of the first of its type in the UK and will put Manchester at the forefront of low carbon community heating schemes.”
Cheshire East Council is pushing ahead with a similar scheme and wants to use a 2.5-acre site close to Bentley’s factory at Leighton West to investigate the potential of tapping into a geothermal energy source which it says could heat every house in the authority’s area.
