Hot rocks hold great potential to generate and deliver sustainable supplies of clean, renewable base load power. Depending on the nature of the resource and the reservoir, individual production wells have the potential to generate consistent supplies of base load power for decades.

The long term commercial viability of geothermal power generation from hot dry rocks depends on being able to extract heat in a thermally sustainable manner while the temperature of the ground resource remains above the temperatures required to generate the power. The commercial viability will depend on a number of factors including rock temperatures, the flow rate of the water through the rocks and the volume of rocks accessed by the injected water. The water flow rate depends on the quality, quantity and distribution of permeable fractures opened in the hot rocks at depth. The most advanced projects in the world are in the Cooper Basin in South Australia and at Soultz sous Forêts in the Rhine Graben in France where circulation systems have been established in granite resevoirs at depths near 5,000 metres. A project near Basel in Switzerland is known as "Deep Heat Mining".

As geothermal power generation technology improves, geothermal energy from hot dry rocks will become a growing source of renewable energy for Australia’s economy.

Wildflowers: photograph by Claus Furstner