Future Energy Sources 1.6 Geothermal Power

This is the good ol US of A, that means Big Oil has the politics and there is almost no chance to make it legal.

However, I would not mind giving up Yellow Stone Park and that great big Caldera that is underneath it to get some real Geo Thermal generation going. We could all go the Black Hills or something like that for vacations.

Always the "If it wasn't for the conspiracy of the ......... " excuses.

"This is the good ol US of A, that means Big Oil has the politics and there is almost no chance to make it legal."

Actually, the "good ol US of A" has the most online geothermal power generation of any country in the world (35% of the world total), even though it only makes up a very small percentage (.36%) of our total power generation.

Greg

Compared to Big Oil the percentages are still smaller than it could be. Do you want to be supporting those guys and theirs for the next 20 generations? Why not get free of the bondage?

Dbdwoods,

First of all, I for one am not inclined to cut off my nose to spite my face.

Do you honestly think that the alternate energy companies will be any better when they are supplying most of the power?

No matter what I do, I can't provide power for myself anywhere as cheaply as I can buy it off the grid, its just that simple, and is not due to the "Evil utilities and power companies" but straightforward economics.

As fossil fuels increase in price, things will change, but not necessarily in ways either of us think they will.

Regards, Greg

Greg:

My take on this is:

We all must think it over instead of arguing about it. With a house or a car ownership one has enough land and surface area to generate solar power. The laziness and lack of interest is what one suffers from. It's hard to self motivate along the line of getting your own when it's already in the wire connected to your house.

Alternate thinking instead of going along with the pack is a thing I want to foster, if we all go along just when will the new method ever be tried out?

Just about never is my guess:

Best Regards to you also

dbdwoods

Geothermal electricity generation, while being touted by its proponents as a clean energy source, is, due to a lack of negative-impact investigation, characterized by uncertainty with regard to its potential for doing ecological damage over time. In a geothermal site, there are after-processing off-gases being released into the atmosphere. The long-term effects of using chemical, sonic, explosives, hydraulic, or other means for the planned changing of rock permeability at depth are unknown.

Both earth core heat resource, and potential aquifer ecology damaging may be caused by using cooled, chemically altered, and waste water from nearby municipalities to heat exchangers and possibly even directly to underground chambers for reheating via the wellhead in order to make the best use of this potentially longest-lasting non-renewable source of energy. There is also the as-yet unanswered question of both the short and long-term geophysical consequences of tapping directly into a magma-generated heat source.

Geothermal engineers show a remarkable diffidence toward the need for investigation into long-term—or any—negative environmental effects of geothermal electricity generation, largely due to the financial success, ease, and inexpensive cost of that energy source.

Mark

There has been a lot of talk over the years of a cable to bring Geothermal power from Iceland to the UK but little seems to get done.

A new 220 km power line is to be built from the nothern coast of the UK to bring windmill power south maybe this will be the catalyst to get the import of Geothermal power going

It wouldn't appear that a cable to bring power to the UK from Iceland would be economically feasible at the present time, and Iceland doesn't generate even all its own electricity from geothermal sources.

California, which produces more geothermal electric power than any whole country outside the US, pegs the cost at $.04-$.06 US per kWh which puts it squarely in the range of electricity from a new coal fired plant (including the cost of the plant and pollution abatement equipment over its lifetime, and the cost of fuel) in the US, so it may be "free", but its not cheap.

However, as technology improves, and fuel costs increase, things may well change.

Greg

Some years back I read a paper that looked at the concept of transporting energy via a pipeline carrying hydrogen rather than cables carrying electricity. The concept was to generate hydrogen and oxygen at the generating site then pump the hydrogen down a pipe line and use it at the load end to generate electricity. The sort of distance they were talking about was 3,000 Km and they believed the losses would be only a fraction of those for a cable.

I havn't been able to find the original article but a Google search for "long distance power transmission" and "hydrogen pipeline" turned up some 52 sites. They talk about numerous techniques including using the hydrogen to super cool a high tension transmission line so that it becomes a superconductor.

It would seem that if you wanted to transfer energy from Iceland to England then you would need to look at using some sort of exotic technology as the losses would be far to great with a normal undersea cable.

A quotation for a 1000km cable has been obtained from Pirreli and the loss was quoted at 17%, I do not think this could be bettered with a electricity/Hydrogen/electricity conversion scheme really I think a lot of nonsense is talked about the use of Hydrogen for energy storage!!!

To tell the truth I hadn't bothered to check how far it is from Iceland to the north west of Scotland but since I have now found out that it's only 800 Km or so then yes I have to agree. If they are only going to loose 17% over the cable and if Iceland has the surplus capacity then it sounds like a good idea.

Living in Australia we tend to get used to long distance and 800 Km isn't far here. I used to have to fly 3,000 Km to get to some of my jobs every few weeks so 800 Km is nothing.

I am planning to move to Brisbane so we will be close neighbours.

Well neighbors by Australian standards, Brisbane is about 1,000 Km from Sydney.

So you live 1000 km apart and still speak the same language, where I live the language changes every 200km.

Geothermal energy that reaches the surface is no problem for harvesting but starting to drill for it is way over the acceptable level for me.

Can you imagine that the mud on Java is molten iron/nickel from the core?

There are interesting things that we still need to find out about the core, but experiments showed that the magnetic field, induced by the rotation of the earth, is unstable. What will happen when we start to harvest the energy stored in it?

Just trying it out is completely unethical.

Gwen

That's nothing. Where I live here in Bali, the Balinese themselves have 4 languages, then there's Bahasa Indonesian (the official language) then Boso Jowo (Javanese) etc. He he, some days it takes 4 or 5 tries just to get yourself understood!

Long distance power transmission is something we need to look at especially moving forward. It makes sense to balance out the ebbs and flows of consumption as we head greener. In other words, green surpluses in one area can feed demands in others. We do this in Australia already across the time zones.

This shot gives you an idea of just how bad things can get. It's the current state of the mudflow near Surabaya in Java. By the way, that's not a geothermal plant, it's a natural gas rig.

There's been a lot of talk regarding building geothermal in Bedugal right next to Lakes Bratan, Buyan and Tamblingan. I can't believe anyone could be so stupid but then money talks…

Tamu,

As you stated: when money talks.

The accident on Java shows that drilling needs to be done with precaution, The mud (which is toxic) comes from 1800m below the surface. What will be the long term effects on the stability of the region? Java (and whole Indonesia) is not known as a geological stable region. The amount of material that is evacuated from a high pressure zone is huge, it will have effects.

It is an immence human originated natural disaster and nothing has been mentioned on television. Is the mud still flowing?

Geothermal is Ok when the heat is available on the surface. Everywhere on earth heat from sources can be harvested but mostly the level is not OK to do some electricity generation. But heating up swimming pools is done and a very nice application. (it saves big amounts of oil and NG)

The final solution will be a mixture of all techniques.

Gwen

Yes, the mud continues to flow. Something like 500,000 people displaced. News reports are supressed as is the case here with 'unofficial' censorship of journalists and so forth. Like the bird flu issue which is just rampant, you won't hear about it in the West.

Masu, next thread sounds just great.

Have a good weekend everybody.

Mark

There is a discussion on the pollution due to geothermal electricity generation: the wast water is still containing lots of acids and other stuff.

Isn't this pollution already present when the hot water is taken from the source?

Is there a difference between the exhaust of the power plant and letting the water flow as it used to do for ages?

Well, logically, the more contaminated fluid you expose, the more contaminants are exposed. It's not a matter of whether the contaminants are there anyway, it's the volume that is enhanced by the human intervention that converts the heat energy to electrical power; and the off-gases produced are deliberately discharged into the air.

And that's not all that is ignored by geothermal engineering. But you won't find these kinds of discussions on a geothermal website, because there appear to be extremely few geothermal engineers who care to responsibly examine the downside of the technology.

Mark

Hi discussion partners,

there are a few new projects going on in Europe but all of these are far from economical as the temperature level is not at all sufficient.

The projects in the Rhine valley are "hot dry rock" projects, where the underground granite is fractured by pressurised water with some 300bar pressure.

This is done typically in a borehole 1000 to 2000m deep at sites where the temperature rise per depth of drill is much higher than the average of 30degree per 1000m.

So the fracture zone of the Rhine valley is providing some extra energy as a 100degree per kilometer.

Unfortunately drilling is very expensive.

To complicate the situation a fracturising process is necessary to generate enough surface area to heat the downfed water in a short time and distance.

This fracturising has triggered two small earthquakes in Basel/Switzerland of 3.? magnitude which was very well sensed by any person but did not do any damage.

Nevertheless the project is stopped as the people there remember the big earthquake 700 years ago that did wipe out or burn down any building in Basel.

There are working powerplants in Lardarello/Italy and San Miguel/Acores Islands on volcanically active regions.

These are working since decades without big problems but they had to learn how to handle the hot corrosive water that is corrosive because acid and minerals are dissolved in the water.

So they have to use an additional heat exchanger of highly corrosion resistant steel.

This may be a big problem in high temperature systems - modern steam turbines are operated above 500°C in the first stage to get a good performance.

What should be done is a broad discussion in political and other circles to overcome a generalised fear: there may be a volcanic eruption triggered by drilling.

The mud volcano in Java is not a good example but we will have some riscs.

There should be also the development for not so expensive deep drilling equipment and procedures as drilling below 5000m is horribly expensive.

For my feeling it would be most useful to evaluate the places of seafloor-spreading (existing on or below the faults on continents too).

What do you think about drilling into a red hot volcano? This is somewhere only a few meter below the surface. There are many places also in Europe but who wants to start?

Seafloor spreading is existing in the mid atlantic ridge where some visible islands are existing - the biggest is Iceland - and many nonvisible are submerged but nonetheless accessible.

Let's try.

RHABE

Rhabe,

I'm not worried on the risk of inducing a volcanic eruption. What happened on Java is fantastic to drag the attention of decision makers: don't give this kind of jobs to the cheapest.

I'm worried on changing the tensions in the rocks, due to cooling down.

Typically, zones with high temperature differences are unstable: Rhine valley is a geological depression. California is crumble cake. Iceland is one gigantic volcano. Indonesia and the Philippines are also known for the seismologic activity.

Starting to change this unstable balance could induce a series of seismic events.

What happened on Java is fantastic to drag the attention of decision makers: don't give this kind of jobs to the cheapest.

Actually one of the companies involved was an Australian mining company that is normally pretty good with their operations.

You are correct Masu as always. However the Australian company is merely an investor as in the main, foreigners are always not really allowed to control these types of operations in Indonesia. You can clearly see how the Indonesian 'scientists' have all the wherewithal to control it themselves. L-O-L.

To get an idea, have a look at this gem of a piece from today's Jakarta Post:

Mud disaster called natural

National News - Thursday, February 22, 2007

Alvin Darlanika Soedarjo, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

In contrast to public opinion, scientists concluded Wednesday that the mud volcano in Sidoarjo, East Java, was caused by natural tectonic activity and would have occurred with or without the nearby drilling activities of Lapindo Brantas Inc.

The conclusion was reached after a two-day International Geological Workshop organized by the Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPT), in which global experts shared their research into what triggered the eruption.

"According to data and analysis, the Sidoarjo mudflow is a natural activity. We call it a mud volcano, which originated from 1,000 to 2,000 meters below the ground," said BPPT chairman Said D. Jenie.

The central government must therefore handle the situation, he added.

The scientists said the May 27, 2006 Yogyakarta earthquake had stimulated tectonic activity and created underground cracks that enabled the mud to move.

BPPT said it lacked data to conclude that Lapindo's exploration activity had triggered the disaster.

"The handling of mud on the surface and efforts to help local people are what matter now. We made a suggestion earlier about relocating the mud to the Madura Strait, which we think is the best solution," Said said, adding that the flow of mud has accelerated in intensity over the nine-month period.

The scientists said the Sidoarjo situation was unusual since mud volcanoes elsewhere in the world had been smaller in magnitude, and occurred in areas that were far from human settlements.

Kyoto University Professor James Mori, however, said there was still a possibility that Lapindo's drilling activities stimulated the eruption.

"It was either activated by the drilling activities, the Yogyakarta earthquake, or a combination of both. But the mud volcano would still have happened without any drilling activity," said Mori, who oversees a disaster prevention research institute at the Japanese university.

"In the mitigation effort, the local administration should make practical decisions while the central government controls the budget and resources for the team," he added.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for the national mudflow response team, which was established by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to handle the situation, might continue their job under the supervision of the East Java administration after its working term ends on March 8.

"If the team is managed by the provincial administration, then it will use the provincial rather than the state budget," team spokesman Rudy Novrianto said.

He added that the personnel and experts on the national team, which received funding from Lapindo, might stay if the president asked them to do so.

"Mud relocation and assistance for the victims should be maintained by the next team," Rudy said. He added that some 13,000 people had been evacuated from the area since the mud began gushing in May 2006.

Even if the personnel change, he said, the team should still pursue its goal of reducing the outpouring of mud from Lapindo's Banjar Panji I well by 70 percent. The well is the main source of mud.

The team plans to drop concrete balls on chains into the well, an untried technique that critics say is of dubious value and could be dangerous.

I guess the concrete chains will be 2000 meters long and the chain is so, if it doesn't work, they can haul them out again and sell the concrete off. What a circus.

'Mud relocation' means pumping it (the mud) out to sea. Oh what a brilliant idea! Up here for dancing you fools.

Public opinion = those displaced asking for $US50 a month compensation. (as per my previous post + photo)

The 'national mudflow response team'. Now, there's a new Ladder 13 organisation for you.

Not only do you burn down forests in Sumatra and Kalimantan and clog cities like KL and Singapore with the smoke from your clearing, now you're going to pump sulphur laden mud into the ocean. Brilliant!

You've already got fishermen pleading for compensation because you're pumping sea life devastating pollution out of your 13 flooded rivers in Jakarta.

I'm an Engineer not really a Spiritualist but that small part of me says Indonesia just deserves all these calamities because of its recklessness for the environment. Some call it karma I understand.

I mean really, what a load of bollocks on many fronts. Lapindo is owned by the richest family in Indonesia who is facing huge compensation payouts so why not just buy some 'expert opinion' and call the whole thing a 'natural disaster' therefore the government will have to pay for it.

Idiots all of them, and more reason for us to voice our concerns as the scientists and Engineers we are, regarding this type of stupidity: ie do not build or drill in active area.

And Indonesia wants to push ahead with a Nuclear Power Facility in West Java.

Gimme a break …. What a farce. They could not organise a bun fight in a bakery.

Masu, sorry for going off topic but actually it's really on topic given your opening address and applicatory disasters like http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Neatorama/~3/80093002/. I think we've pretty much covered it and we all should be saying, explicitly, "forget geothermal". And especially, please forget it here in Bali.

May I sheepishly suggest we visit Global Grid Interconnect (GGI) in the next thread?

Maybe they should have let the Australians drill the hole. So it wasn't the fault of the drilling program. Lets see, no mud volcano, drill big deep hole in ground, mud volcano erupts from big deep hole in ground flooding miles of surrounding terrain. No I can't see any connection it must have been a natural event and would have drilled its own big deep hole in the ground if the mining company hadn't.

And Indonesia wants to push ahead with a Nuclear Power Facility in West Java.

This is something that has been raised in Australia an I for one am seriously concerned given the apparent level of shady deals. A nuclear accident in Indonesia could have serious repercussions for an awful lot of people that aren't necessarily Indonesian.

There was a push to make sure that they couldn't get any uranium for their reactor from Australia but I don't know how far this got. Given our current governments view that high pressure water reactors being the greatest thing since sliced bread and their sucking up to the Indonesian government I doubt uranium exports from Australia to Indonesia would ever get blocked.

May I sheepishly suggest we visit Global Grid Interconnect (GGI) in the next thread?

Tomorrows thread is going to be about a multi technology co-generation technology with an enhanced distribution grid, how dose that sound?

Hi,

The muds volcano that was originated by drilling in

Java is not worse than a small scale volcano.

If a big scale volcanic eruption is triggered (may be it would wait for some more centuries without triggering) then there is big damage:

Iceland and Lanzarote had it around 1740, Krakatau 1870, Pinatubo 199?, and many more.

But the really big ones are not so often: Laacher See in Germany between Bonn and Koblenz erupted at the end of the last iceage and covered 30km around with lapilli more than 20m thick!

This will happen again, we do not know when.

But if we drill into the earth we should have consent in the public and politic opinion not to care about small problems or big problems arising from drilling.

You need not worry about changing tensions in cooling rocks.

There is continuous cracking by tensions and shear.

Shear can be blocked if the plates shearing against each other are blocked by their structure (like toothed gears). This is causing the severe earthquakes in California but most of the movements are smooth there too. Tension will give rise to very early cracking as brittle material as rocks cannot withstand tension very much.

Other big earthquakes originate deep down in the earthmantle 600km below if parts of the earthcrust are subducted and either sliding with stick-slip or recrystallising with a high pressure modification thus releasing a big amount of energy that was stored in elastic compression.

Rhine valley is different as there is a debate going on: either the compression from the south being caused by the africanic plate (Italy) being driven into the European plate causing compression in the north-south direction and related tension in the east-west direction. Agreed is that the lakes of northern Italy and Switzerland are caused by this effect. But the rhinevalley is much larger so it is debated too that an upwelling mantle convection is driving away the west from the east side causing the depression that is mostly filled up by sediments(3000m deep), this going on since around 60 million years at a rate of 1mm per year.

May be there is developing a fault that will be (in 100 million years) a midocean ridge as existing in the mid atlantic where one part of the ridge is Iceland and its volcanos.

So this is a part of volcanic activities and any interaction we do will not seriously change the pattern but may trigger early eruptions.

And this schall be discussed before started. Else it will come to a halt at the first adverse events.

In total it would be better to trigger unstable elastic situations early as then there will be less energy released.

The same should be true if we trigger the stored energy in a volcano being released by our activity. This energy is not the heat but the water that is going down, pressurised by gravity and there heated up to yield a high pressure superheated fluid as a mixture of molten lava and water and many other substances including vast amounts of CO2 and SO2. Superheated fluids can and will change only to a gas if pressure is relieved. If this happens to a water enriched magma by our drilling then a gigantic spray of hot lapilli in a steam cloud will burst to our atmosphere.

This has to be prevented if drilling inside or near a magma chamber of a volcano.

This we have to bring into the discussion.

RHABE