On Wednesday 1st and Thursday 2nd, about 120 registrants gathered at the Stamford Plaza in Glenelg, South Australia for the 3rd Hot Rock Energy Conference. Two days of stimulating talks covered a range of topics from project updates, to groundwater, to grid connections, to geophysics, to international perspectives, and most things in between.

 A highlight was video from HDRPL Director Roy Baria, showing steam
emerging from what should be the world’s first commercially viable engineered geothermal project in Landau, Germany. Some newspaper reports of the event focussed only on Minister Ian MacFarlane’s challenge to “show me the spinning turbine!” (e.g. “Macfarlane not energised by hot rocks”, Australian Financial Review 2 Aug), but others were much more enthusiastic (e.g. “Hot rocks to heat our world”, Melbourne Herald-Sun 2 Aug).