HERA Industry Development Senior Research Engineer Dr Boaz Habib recently attended the NZ Geothermal Workshop held in Auckland on 24th – 26th November.
The conference was well-attended by the geothermal community and had international attendance from geothermally active countries such as Indonesia.
Thanks to the AGGAT programme, this conference has now started receiving papers from our research in Above Ground Technologies and now regularly features a conference stream on ORC technology in above ground engineering research.
This year, HERA also awarded a prize to the best paper in Above Ground Technology which went to a research team working on stibnite scaling removal in geothermal plants. Dr Habib presented on AGGAT programme activities and advances made over the last 2 years. This was well-received with inquiries about the possibility of international collaboration for installation of 100-200kW units in remote island sites as well as potential research projects.
At the NZGA AGM which was also held at this workshop, a particular focus was on the World Geothermal Congress (WGC) taking place in Melbourne and NZ involvement in it at an international level.
A number of field trips are being organised in NZ as follow ups from WGC. In this period, HERA is also organising an international AGGAT Conference to be held on 30th April 2015 in Auckland, which we hope HERA members will attend to get a taste for what is happening around the AGGAT space. More details will be available soon but for now, please note the date in your diaries.
We have now had official confirmation of continuation of our funding from Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) and we have already embarked on a very busy next 2 years of AGGAT activities, which include an enhanced in-house capability at HERA and a number of new researchers at Auckland University, which we are very excited about.
For further information on the AGGAT program or activities, please contact our General Manager Industry Development Nick Inskip or Senior Research Engineer Dr Boaz Habib.