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The Alberta foothills community of Hinton, with a population of 10,000, will become the testing ground for a technology that can convert abandoned oil and gas wells into sources of clean, geothermal energy that could replace natural gas for heating.
The town and Calgary-based Epoch Energy, specialists in geothermal energy, have already conducted a pre-FEED study that determined that a well pair could recover a significant amount of heat, with the possibility of a 16-year payback and an internal rate of return of five per cent. Epoch will also be involved in the FEED study.
The heat extracted from wells will be used to heat the town’s municipal building, a local high school and several other buildings in Hinton.