"Geothermal electricity has the advantage of being available 24 hours a day, 8000 hours a year, and this makes it a great source of baseload power," Bussmann said.
Electricity from geothermal sources is set to soar in Germany — and all thanks to a law that has made drilling wells deep enough to hit the hot temperature water, which is needed to produce electricity, financially viable.
Less than 0.4 percent of Germany's total primary energy supply came from geothermal sources in 2004. But after a renewable energy law that introduced a tariff scheme of US $0.23per kilowatt-hour (kWh) for electricity produced from geothermal sources came into effect that year, a construction boom was sparked and the new power plants are now starting to come online.
"Geothermal sources could supply Germany's electricity needs 600 times over," Werner Bussmann, CEO of the German Geothermal Association [Geothermische Vereinigung], told RenewableEnergyWorld.com.
He said special, cost effective technology allowed energy to be extracted from geothermal reservoirs containing low- to moderate-temperature water that are so typical of Germany.
Innovative technology is important because Germany, unlike countries such as Iceland, Italy or Indonesia, does not have volcanic activity or the associated dry steam reservoirs that can be used to produce electricity directly.