Somewhere between 5,000 and 7,000 feet below the Walker Ranch Energy drilling site, an underground river of hot water pulsed through the Earth — an everlasting fuel source that developers hope to capture.
A stone’s throw away, other explorers already have tapped the 280-degree water, called brine. U.S. Geothermal Inc.’s Raft River Energy project — the state’s only commercial geothermal power plant — has used the brine to power about 10,000 homes a year since 2007.
Expectations are high at Walker Ranch, where Rig 101 soon will drill one of Idaho’s few geothermal energy exploration wells in recent memory. Walker Ranch developers such as Trent Yang hope to tap the same resource that U.S. Geothermal has been using. They hope their years of planning will result in a $150 million, 25-megawatt power plant built there by the end of 2015.
“It’s testing the waters. Hopefully, they’ll hit some good flow and be able to make something out of it,” said Steve Lubinski, geologist for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s Burley field office.
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