SaskPower and DEEP Earth Energy Production Corp have reached an agreement which moves one obstacle away from the construction of a geothermal facility near Estevan. SaskPower has agreed to purchase the power generated by the plant once it is complete and functioning. 

President and CEO of DEEP Energy, Kirsten Marcia explains that this agreement was crucial for the continuation of the project. 

"The important thing for us, is that having this contract in place now allows us to acquire the construction debt for the construction of the project. It allows the bank to lend to us for the construction phase. Without having a customer, a bank would be pretty hesitant to lend the money to build a large facility like this."

And with any construction build, the costs will be considerable, although Marcia is quick to point out that while construction is expensive, over the life of the project, it is not as substantial. 

"Geothermal can provide base-load power which means that instead of selling a product only intermittently like wind or solar, we're selling our power 100% of the time."

Fortunately for them, Estevan is an ideal location for their plant both in location and with its long history of drilling. 

"In order to get deep enough where the water is hot enough, we need to get into the deepest part in Saskatchewan and that is right along the US border."

"It's taken out years and millions of dollars of exploration costs because wells become public after a certain amount of time and so we were able to look at the historical records of temperatures, permeability and allows us to move this project along much faster. It's ironic, but without the oil and gas industry, we wouldn't even know that this resource exists."

SaskPower has also made a commitment to have 50% of its power generated through renewable resource by 2030. Something of which, Marcia is well aware.

"If we want to be 50% renewable by 2030, we need to move quickly. And one of the nice things about geothermal is that we can build these facilities quite quickly. This is conventional drilling and the turbine technology is 40 years old. We believe we can play a significant part of SaskPower's goal."

The power generated from the proposed plant would equal approximately the power needed for 5000 homes and be equal to taking 8000 vehicles off the road for a year.

With the signing of the purchase agreement completed, DEEP Energy can now move onto their next stage. 

"We are currently underway with our bankable feasibility study, so the next step will be drilling two wells later this year. A production well and an injection well and then the results of those wells will give us the data we need to fine-tune our engineering and our design and then a year from now, we'll be launching into construction."

"If everything goes smoothly from this point forward, we would be producing power in about 2 and a half years."

Marcia also noted that the project would not only generate power for SaskPower, but have alternate applications as well.

"Part of our business plan is, in addition to generating power, to use the geothermal heat for industrial applications. Ideally, we would love to be able to supply heat to greenhouse developers or other industrial buildings. The water that comes out of our plant, once we have used it and exhausted it for power consumption, is still 65 degrees Celsius. There is huge opportunity to offer it to any user like a greenhouse, as discounted heat which is clean and sustainable."