Italian company Exergy has announced the operational launch of another geothermal plant in Turkey for the client Akça Enerji. With the completion of this ORC binary installation, the Akca plant will be the world's first equipped with 2-pressure-level cycle on a single-disk turbine.
The Turkish Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources confirmed in June that the plant meets the required performance targets. Akça Enerji will therefore benefit from increased revenues coming from the government feed-in-tariff improving the payback of the geothermal plant.
The Akça plant, situated in the Denizli region, is a low enthalpy geothermal plant (fluid temperature at 105 C°/220 F°) generating a power output of 4 MW. The installation of the innovative Radial Outflow Turbine, Exergy’s core development of turbine design, enabled Exergy to offer the client a superior plant performance with 2 pressure levels with a single expander, producing up to 20% more power than competitors using a single pressure level system. The performance tests Exergy’s staff conducted on the plant have given extremely positive results indicating a very high turbine efficiency, over 5% more than the guaranteed figures provided to the client.
This new binary plant configuration will increase the feasibility of low-enthalpy 3-8 MW range plants down to 100 °C and open up new possibilities for Exergy clients to exploit low enthalpy small resources more efficiently and economically than ever before.
Exergy will be exhibiting at the GRC Annual Meeting & GEA Geothermal Energy Expo, being held September 20-23 at the Peppermill Resort Spa Casino in Reno, Nevada, USA.
