(to the USA’s alternative energy sources)? I ask because outside of California, there seems to be few sites for geothermal energ available. I know, if you drill deep enough, you will hit hot rock. However, is GE all that cheap? Extracting the energy involves the use of heat exchangers, pumps, and possibly low pressure turbines. Wind energy looks like a less complicated situation.
According to the US Department of Energy:
Wind energy is certainly less complex in the generating phase, but it’s a lot more difficult in normal system operation, since you can’t turn it off and on (what’s called “dispatch”) like you can with geothermal.
Much of what is referred to as “geothermal” does not involve drilling down to a “hot rock”. It simply takes advantage of the difference in temperature between the air and a few feet below the surface. a typical installation will have a gridwork of pipes in the ground. Water is circulated and warmed (or cooled, depending on the season) to about 54 degrees (the exact temperature will depend on your lattitude).
Here is a link with a better explanation. This style of geothermal energy can be used to heat (and cool) individual homes.
Which is about 10% of US production, according to the same site. Not bad. That’s also the equivalent of 100 nuclear reactors.
Considering how cheap nuclear power is and how it doesnt contribute to global warming, I would think the future is going to be big on nuclear, not geo.
Depth isnt the issue, the site really needs to be good for geothermal. These plants are not cost efficient unless theyre on natural formations that lend themselves to geothermal power. You cant really build one in the middle of Chicago. It needs to be near plate boundaries or near the “ring of fire” to be competitive.
The advantages of geo-thermal technology is on the user side and not the production side. There are no limitations to location and the savings are substantial. I just visited a guy who built a house that was twice the size of his last house and the geo-thermal system in it uses much less electricity. It would make more economic sense to install geo-thermal pumps in houses than it would be to install solar cells.
Thats incorrect. My link claims .5% not 10%. In your link, I see this:
“This potential is about 10% of the overall U.S. electric capacity today”
So in other words, if we tapped all the geothermic areas we could, we could get 10%.
About 26% of Iceland’s electricity is geothermal, and 87% of their heating is geothermal.
For the most part, geothermal electrical generation is limited by location, location, location.
Both demonstrably false.
No it doesn’t. It only needs to be near, well, hot rocks:
Central Australia
Texas
Cornwall, France and Portugal
Huh? How does nuclear power contribute to global warming? It doesnt put an CO2 in the air. As far as it not being cheap, Id like a cite on that too. It is cheap.
One stab at an answer.
Many details at the site and more following its link to the actual report I am sure.
That site was a whole lot of coulda woulda’s with a heaping spoonful of government R&D.
When I see a quote of 2000 TIMES the energy produced in 2005 I have to call shenanigans on the article.
Every form of power generation puts some CO2 in the air. Think of the effort and expenditure to build such a plant (minimum 10 years), of mining, refining and transporting the fuel, and so on. Less than coal or gas, certainly, but more than solar or geo.
Let me quote from your (5 year old) cite:
So at best on par at the time, assuming all his guesses about future prices and carbon taxes were correct. But as always he ignores some of the the true costs of building a nuclear plant; not one has ever been built anywhere in the world without massive government subsidies. One of the most significant of those hidden costs is for public liability insurance; no insurance company will cover a nuclear plant for this so governments have to. If the plant owners had to bear this cost (as do other power plant operators) none could even be built.
Then we come to decommissioning costs. The Sellafield site in the UK is currently costing £1.1bn a year to do so, projected cost £73 billion over the next 112 years. None of this cost is carried by the plant owners; the UK government has even agreed to pay the clean-up costs for any accidents caused by the commercial company doing the work.
Costs of and lack of funds for decommissioning.
They are not “cheap”.
As the op requested an answer to a “could” question, the article’s (prepared by a government sponsored MIT-led panel) informed speculation of "coulda"s seem to fit the bill. The “accessible” geothermal resource is huge so it “could” provide for all we need and more … theoretically. Whether or not it is practical to do, or cost effective to do so is a different question which they do not seem to analyze as comprehensively. Minimally geothermal is one good answer that is already begining to be applied to good effect in the best locations.
I’m not doubting it’s usefulness in areas that will support it but when I saw the figure of 2000 times the energy we currently produce my bullshit meter pinged to the right, exploded and is currently circling the planet.
The ideal way to do it is to install the geothermal heating and cooling system at the time of initial construction. The system is powered by electrical heat pumps. Then install a PV (solar) electrical system and you can have a house that is heated and/or cooled year around and is basically self-sufficient from an energy standpoint. The house will use no oil and will be comfortable while staying environmentally “clean”.
The OP is talking about geothermal power generation which is different then the geothermal heat pumps people use as part of a home heating system that some seem to mention here.
>Every form of power generation puts some CO2 in the air.
Nuclear power deosnt fill the air with CO2. Coal does. If you playing the “but look at building and transportation costs” game then geothermal is just as bad. When people say nuclear doesnt put CO2 in the air, they mean compared to all the fossil fuels we are burning at a unsustainable rate.
Continue with the anti-nuclear nuttiness, thats how we got here in the first place. If it wasnt for the idiots at greenpeace we’d be living in a nuclear utopia, but instead we’re breating in emissions from coal fired plants and guaranteeing ourselves lung problems. We also would have the capacity for electric cars by now too, something the status quo cannot give us, en masse. Geothermal, like I cited above, can at BEST give us 10% of our current power needs. Considering the move to electric cars will add quite a bit of power demand, then we’re looking at what? 8 or 5% of our needs.
Geothermal is a novelty. We need massive amounts of power from something other than coal. Nuclear is the way to go. We can burn our waste in breeder reactors too, if that concerns you.
Agree with nuclear. Seriously, saying that it contributes to carbon emissions is rather like saying that a bandage contributes to bleeding.
In any case, the real problem with gethermanl is that it’s not practical in most locations where people want power. A similar but more serious problem plagues wind and most solar energy projects. It’s not wholly impractical, but it can’t really be used with current technology very easily or efficiently.