Investor Presentaiton

Geothermal Quotes* Spa*ark Energy_27 "Flexible dispatch and regulation capabilities are becoming increasingly valuable as the proportion of load met by VRE increases and the proportion of load served by base-load resources declines. "I ... geothermal energy is underutilized and under-procured for two reasons. First, the misconception that geothermal energy can only provide base-load service is prevalent and utilities, regulators, system operators... have been slow to recognize the full suite of generation attributes that geothermal possesses. Second, renewable energy procurement processes have tended to compare renewable energy resource alternatives against one another on a cost per kilowatt-hour basis without considering the attributes that competing technologies offer or the full range of system costs that the competing technologies impose. ... "Geothermal projects also avoid system costs that some competing generation technologies impose. For example, as VRE market penetration increases additional infrastructure or additional flexible generation resources (are needed) to ensure system reliability is maintained. While significant effort is underway to transition the electric system to a much more flexible and robust electric system so that the costs of integrating large quantities can be mitigated, the fact is that today the system is not flexible or robust enough to handle large penetrations of VRE without significant, incremental system expenses. Further, it should be noted that the need for a more robust and flexible system is partly driven by the transition toward high penetrations of VRE. "Another cost that seems to be overlooked in integration studies is the opportunity cost of transmission. Each type of renewable resource has different transmission capacity requirements for the delivery of a specified amount of energy. For example, wind capacity factors are typically in the 35% range, Solar PV in the 25% range and geothermal in the 85% range. Therefore it takes about three times the transmission capacity to deliver the same amount of energy from a solar PV resource than from a geothermal resource. ... "A geothermal plant can ramp up and down very quickly ... multiple times per day to a minimum of 10% of nominal power and up to 100% of nominal output power. For comparison, gas turbines ... kept warm and rotating at minimum power for use as available power resource for the grid ... ramp up 10% of their nominal power per minute. Geothermal ORC# can do 15% as normal dispatch rate, and 30% in Flexible Operation Mode, (without burning any fuel for stand-by operation)." * Quotations from: The Value of Geothermal Energy Generation Attributes, Aspen Environmental Group 2013 report to Ormat Technologies http://geo-energy.org/reports/Values%20of%20Geothermal%20Oct%202013%20appendix.pdf # ORC: Organic Rankine Cycle. Used in binary geothermal power generators such as would be employed at Lemont

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