Why There Is An Increased Interest In Geothermal Energy

Well, at least they seem to be using the term "geothermal" correctly. It's a pretty cheap shot to propagandize over Fukushima, though.

Geothermal works really well on a small scale. I built a house about 15 years ago in Naples, Florida at 941 Galleon Drive that has it's 12 tons of HVAC equipment running deep groundwater through stainlesss steel AC compressors using two water wells on opposite sides of the property about 100' apart. The house is CBS construction with 13" thick concrete floors on both levels that act as a heat sinks to help stabilize the temps inside. Double insulated windows and 2" thick solid mahagony exterior doors help also.

A number of dwellings dotted along the NE coast of the Zürichsee do similar.

Iceland figured it out.

http://www.nea.is/geothermal/

Oh, yes. And New Zealand too.

Well since global warming hasn't panned out and given us anywhere near the atmospheric temperature gains we were expecting, that would have made air source heat pump systems more viable in more areas, many had to go to ground source based systems to find the heat to work with.

Just a theory.

"U.S. scientists officially declare 2016 the hottest year on record. That makes three in a row."

Give it time....

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/01/18/u-s-scientists-officially-declare-2016-the-hottest-year-on-record-that-makes-three-in-a-row/?utm_term=.1d45eadc7a3d

If every year is a new hottest year record, it will not be long until hell freezes over, since it is impossible to reversibly pull heat from an isothermal source to produce local heating. This is an accordance with the observed rate at which hell is expanding adiabatically, so this is a no-brainer.

At what point do we think there will have to at least be a local minimum in yearly average temperature? If data only ever increases, one may be tempted to suspect the source of the data, especially for some nebulous thing as HCCC.

What makes you think it is recent interest? As a well logging engineer (I ran tools down well boreholes and collected and analyzed data on the well) I personally logged two USGS failures in their search for "hot dry rocks" or formations capable of becoming geothermal wells. They thought they knew where they could find a formation hot enough to generate steam without drilling to a gross depth. Unfortunately, they missed their mark on both. The target formation in both wells was dry, fairly porous, but not any hotter than a well of similar depth in West Virginia where I was based at the time. Both were over the 212 degree F mark, but not significantly over as they had hoped. The one well in Maryland, they decided, should have been about the middle of the Chesapeake Bay. The other, I never heard anymore about why they missed the mark.

This was prior to 1980.

It's not all sunshine and roses....

"Geothermal Energy Disadvantages

• Potential emissions – Greenhouse gas below Earth’s surface can potentially migrate to the surface and into the atmosphere. Such emissions tend to be higher near geothermal power plants, which are associated with sulfur dioxide and silica emissions. Also, and the reservoirs can contain traces of toxic heavy metals including mercury, arsenic and boron.
• Surface Instability – Construction of geothermal power plants can affect the stability of land. In January 1997, the construction of a geothermal power plant in Switzerland triggered an earthquake with a magnitude of 3.4 on the Richter scale.
• High cost for electricity – Total costs usually end up somewhere between $2 – 7 million for a 1 MW geothermal power plant.
• High up-front costs for heating and cooling systems – While there is a predictable ROI, it will not happen quickly.For an average sized home, installation of geothermal heat pumps costs between $10,000 – $20,000 which can pay off itself in another 5-10 years down the line
• Location Specific – Good geothermal reservoirs are hard to come by. Iceland and Philippines meet nearly one-third of their electricity demand with geothermal energy. Prime sites are often far from population centers.
• Distribution costs – If geothermal energy is transported long distances, cost can become prohibitive.
• Sustainability questions – Some studies show that reservoirs can be depleted if the fluid is removed faster than replaced. This is not an issue for residential geothermal heating and cooling, where geothermal energy is being used differently than in geothermal power plants.
• Cost of Powering the Pump – Geothermal heat pumps need a power source.
• May Run Out of Steam: You have to be incredibly careful when you are trying to check everything that is related to geothermal energy. Mind must be taken to watch the heat and not to abuse it, because if the heat is not taken care of properly, it can cause a meltdown or other issues where the energy is not properly distributed or used."

http://planetsave.com/2016/02/11/geothermal-energy-advantages-and-disadvantages/

Stop being negative, Nancy, we want only the roses and the sunshine (or rather the bullshine).

What does not emit mercury? What does not emit silica, dust, or cause some form of hateful emission?

Sounds like we are at least one million years too late to crawl back up in the trees and forget about evolving into the

human race.

Who was it who said, "a negative person can find a problem for every solution?" - Just askin'.

"Enhanced geothermal" sounds remarkably like fracking, though they cleverly avoided that word.

Just look at it as unprofitable fracking. I would rather have a larger return on that investment.

The biggest problem I see with either wet or dry geothermal is (1) drilling into it, and (2) drilling into it with the ability to pull out vast amounts of heat, and (3) not totally destroying all the prime movers you can line up in front of it before X amount of time.

Initial practice, sadly, was having two steam turbines. One online, and the other one fixing to be online as soon as #1 craps out about an hour from now.

Then folks learned how to exchange heat with the earth, and manage to have something resembling clean steam to the turbines. Better. Turbines that (1) still manage to hold up to this abuse, (2) can still produce reasonable torque at speed (i.e. accept a load), and that could handle three phase flow would be the most desirable. Tesla Turbines (disc turbines), are known to accept three phase flow, because these are boundary layer turbines. Tesla turbines are not widely known to have high torque (unless the speed is way up there), and they cannot accept load at typical synchronous speed with most generators to operate at 50 or 60 Hz.

There is a certain amount of tinkering that needs to be done to make this work, although really, the heat exchanger method is not bad.

No increased interest at all, it is just that people have started to awaken from sceptic hibernation. Been around for years and the current energy comfort zone is shakey. Like solar, hydrogen cell, storage battery etc, people are now looking from a different view point and taking note. None more so than the 'failing untilities' who shot it all down years ago, and now think it is the greatest solution since sliced bread.

1837. An electric car. Nearly 200 years ago it was invented. Solar, 1839. Sliced bread; July 7, 1928, exactly 89 years ago.

Maybe it is because all the Democrats are going to hell or underground whichever comes first.

If they all promise to not show up for the Inauguration of President Trump, then perhaps we can invite them all to stop showing up at all for anything.

A free lunch at a utility would be the best thing since sliced bread. Geothermal would still however, be a somewhat useful pain in the butt in the few locations where it can be conveniently sourced without drilling miles down.