Above: Dominica (CJ Photo)
By the Caribbean Journal staff
Dominica’s government said this week that the drilling of its geothermal production wells had been completed.
According to Energy Minister Rayburn Blackmoore, the country has finished that phase of the country’s geothermal project.
The next phase of the project will involve shutting down the wells for a period of 12 weeks in order to “monitor progress on the generation of heat,” according to the government.
“I have been so advised that to generate energy you need to have a minimum of 180 degrees Celsius based on the reviews we have gotten thus far, it is above 235 degrees. I think that this is tremendous for us going forward,” Blackmoore said in a government release.
Dominica is one of several islands in the Eastern Caribbean pursuing geothermal energy, along with Montserrat and Nevis, although it has thus far made the most progress.
“We got to the depth of fifteen hundred and six metres and the initial results that we have seen based on the log in that we’ve been able to monitor is that the results will be better than what we expected,” Blackmoore said.
The initial goal for the project is to commission a plant of about 10 to 15 megawatts “so that the people of Dominica can benefit from that resource,” he said.
The aim is to have the plant constructed by 2015.