While Ketchum city officials and members of the public will once again deliberate on the revitalization of Warm Springs next week, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate student has released a research paper that takes this idea well beyond an amendment to the zoning code.
"Better utilization of the present resource is deemed worthwhile for both an inexpensive district heating system and a small electrical production facility," wrote Nathan Lovell in his paper, "Economic Low-Temperature Geothermal Energy Development: What Warm Springs can take from Chena."
Published in May, Lovell's report compares Guyer Hot Springs to the Chena Hot Springs, a resort located 56 miles northeast of Fairbanks, Alaska that is completely off the power grid.
Since coming online in 2006, Chena's geothermal power plant has provided not only much-needed electricity—which previously came from large-scale diesel generators—but also an increase in tourist dollars.
In addition to reducing the cost of power from 30 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) to 5 cents, the innovative renewable energy project heats 44 buildings, operates two greenhouses and keeps the Aurora Ice Museum frozen year-round.
According to Lovell, Guyer Hot Springs shares enough of Chena's geologic characteristics to make it a viable project.
Like Chena, the water in the Guyer Hot Springs, which averages approximately 160 degrees Fahrenheit, would previously have been considered too low for power generation.
The scientific details behind Chena's power plant are dizzying, but essentially steam is required to run a turbine that creates electricity.
However, with help from Connecticut-based United Technologies Corporation, Chena found a way around the lack of steam, setting a record for geothermal power production at low temperatures.
The system acts as an air conditioner that has been reverse-wired so that instead of electricity being used to produce different temperatures, the different temperatures produce electricity.
Hot water goes into the unit where it turns the air conditioner fluid, which has a lower boiling point than water, into steam, which then runs a turbine.
The water is then deposited back into the ground and the steam exiting from the turbine is cooled using water from a nearby cold spring and returned to the system to be boiled off once again.
In this way, the power plant is completely renewable as long as the hot spring continues to produce water at that temperature, and the negative impacts on the environment are nearly nonexistent.
Of course, building a similar $2 million project in Warm Springs would be a considerable challenge, especially considering that Idaho Power supplies electricity to residences for just under 6 cents per kilowatt-hour.
Lovell added that because the Guyer Hot Springs are several degrees cooler than those of Chena there would be a decrease in efficiency if a system were to be built in Warm Springs.
"With the low cost of power right now, it might not mean tremendous cost savings," Ketchum Mayor Randy Hall said of building a geothermal power plant. "However, at the end of the day, it's the right thing to do."
Hall said he and other city officials are scheduled to sit down in August with the Cimino family, owners of Guyer Hot Springs, to discuss potential uses for the water.
"The Ketchum Community Development Corporation has been doing work to figure out possibilities because that resource has just been going straight back into the river," Hall said. "At the same time, electric generation at that site begs the question of where the money for infrastructure is going to come from."
In the end, it will be up to the Cimino family to decide how or when the resource is used. In the end, power production might not be the best use.
"The most obvious and simply-implemented use for Guyer's water is for district heating," Lovell said.
The hot springs water is already doing that.
Approximately 25 homes in the vicinity of Jim Cimino's house, located on the western end of Warm Springs Road, are heated by water from the hot springs, said Neil Bradshaw, president of the Ketchum CDC.
Ketchum once enjoyed a heated pool fed by the hot springs, but the pipes coming from Warm Springs deteriorated and the pool closed in 1988.
Another study contracted by the CDC, in partnership with the Idaho Department of Water Resources, reiterated Lovell's conclusion about the most cost-efficient use of the water.
"It would be more economical to keep the resource as water, rather than convert it to electricity, and to use it for district heating or a spa facility," Bradshaw said, referring to the report, which was completed at the end of 2007.
While the current cost of electricity could keep a power plant on the shelf in the near future, there is little doubt that the benefits of Guyer Hot Springs remain largely untapped and could mean more than simply raw savings on power bills.
"Direct heating of premium attraction, such as pools and greenhouses, can act as an additional attractant for the desired influx of tourists," Lovell wrote.
Photo courtesy of the Community Library, Regional History Department
The Guyer Hot Springs once filled the pool at the Bald Mountain Hot Springs, shown here in a photo by Martyn Mallory, circa 1930. A recent research report by an MIT graduate student looked at possible uses of the hot springs as a source for geothermal electricity production.
