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You can have geothermal power everywhere if you drill deep enough

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Re: You can have geothermal power everywhere if you drill deep enough

#131

Post by andy_ppp »

throwaway0332 wrote: post #129

> True geothermal energy is truly green Reminder: few energy sources do not add heating to the atmosphere during the whole energy lifecycle! It's the ones that *subtract* energy from the environment in the first place: solar, wind, dams, tidal energy. Other sources (including geothermal, nuclear, oil ...), even if we could produce a 100% efficient power plant, are still extracting energy that would otherwise stayed "…

Energy from heat is never discussed with climate change, only energy from the greenhouse effect. Do you know what percentage of each (roughly) human activity is causing?

Re: You can have geothermal power everywhere if you drill deep enough

#132

Post by goodpoint »

coolso wrote: post #38
Glawen wrote: post #10

Yeah right. They drilled in Strasbourg, France, to get this "free" energy. When they entered production, the city was experiencing an earthquake every month, waking the city at night. After a magnitude 4 earthquake, they finally shut down the plant. A town in Germany is devastated also due to geothermal power: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staufen_im_Breisgau

This is why pushback against climate change policies is, I believe, a healthy thing. Yes, protecting the environment is super important, but time and time again we are told to trust the science, trust the experts, everything is going to go exactly as planned. And time and time again, it turns out the experts didn't account for this, or for that, or were just flat out wrong, and then everyone pays for the "oops". We s…

> Yes, protecting the environment is super important, but time and time again we are told to trust the science

What's the alternative? Trust big oil companies instead?

Re: You can have geothermal power everywhere if you drill deep enough

#133

Post by jstimpfle »

ComradePhil wrote: post #27
anonporridge wrote: post #9

Something I've always wondered. Wouldn't massive scale geothermal end up pumping more heat into the atmosphere that otherwise wouldn't be there? In contrast, the energy collected by solar and wind generators is from the energy added to Earth by the sun and would be energy in our atmosphere regardless of whether or not we collect it. But it seems like the heat inside the Earth's core should be fairly well insulated by…

Solar is also trapping more energy than what would never be there. If the sun's rays just hit the ground, a portion of it would be reflected back. We're using dark material to aborb most of what would be reflected back and we end up trapping more energy than we should... Solar panels are around 15% efficient, which means 85% of this trapped energy is immediately converted to heat, heating the local environment... and…

Is that a problem though? What percentage of earth surface would be covered by solar panels if the world went 100% solar?

Re: You can have geothermal power everywhere if you drill deep enough

#134

Post by FrankyHollywood »

Drilling is not the problem which stands in the way for using earth warmth.

It is pollution of ground water, risk of earth quakes, transportation of the heat, local cool down and having to drill new wholes.

In Europe we have tried, and tested with wholes up to 1km depth but it is not as ideal as one might think. Otherwise it would have been used on a large scale already.

Re: You can have geothermal power everywhere if you drill deep enough

#135

Post by derac »

hackernewds wrote: post #119
Glawen wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A conventional drill can be cemented as well, the technology is already existing but mishap happened anyway Another town near Strasbourg is devastated like staufen Im breigsbau: Lochwiller. With the same issue as staufen, except that in this case it was a family who drilled to heat their home.

are you telling me a family drilled to heat their home and caused earthquake? that sounds absurd

The straufen issue wasn't an earthquake. A chemical reaction occured when water mixed with an anhydrous layer, causing the ground to swell up to 12 inches per the linked wiki article.

Re: You can have geothermal power everywhere if you drill deep enough

#136

Post by bjourne »

leoedin wrote: post #56
Animats wrote: post #45

Microwave drilling. It's a known thing at small scale.[1] If it can be done at larger scale, it ought to have other applications. Doing it downhole at the end of a long pipe string is going to be much harder than doing it in a factory. So why isn't this an industrial machining process already, like plasma cutting? GA Drilling was pushing plasma drilling back in 2018.[2] They're still pushing it, but not making holes.…

This could also have good use for ground source heat pumps - they're the most efficient, robust and consistent source of domestic heating we have, but require fairly deep (60m ish) boreholes. If digging could be quicker, easier or faster these heat pumps could be installed everywhere.

Couldn't we have one big plant with a large hole that distributes heat to surrounding homes?

Re: You can have geothermal power everywhere if you drill deep enough

#137

Post by giantg2 »

In regards to the deeper drilling... wasn't there an article recently that the core is cooling faster than previously thought? Do we know how it could affect the earth if we are doing this at a large scale? Are we going to cause problems further down the road because we don't know enough.

Re: You can have geothermal power everywhere if you drill deep enough

#138

Post by meltedcapacitor »

OJFord wrote: post #85
leoedin wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This could also have good use for ground source heat pumps - they're the most efficient, robust and consistent source of domestic heating we have, but require fairly deep (60m ish) boreholes. If digging could be quicker, easier or faster these heat pumps could be installed everywhere.

They can also be horizontal, covering a larger area at a much shallower depth.

Indeed horizontal (pipe network, like underfloor heating in reverse) is the most efficient solution, digging deep is for when the plot is too small or otherwise encumbered (or if one sits on top of a volcano).

Re: You can have geothermal power everywhere if you drill deep enough

#139

Post by eru »

napier wrote: post #115
eru wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pure thermal (ie. just energy, no GHG) climate change is right around the corner if energy use keeps going up exponentially and we keep reducing earth's albedo. What makes you think so? What growth rates are you assuming? How long is your time horizon?

If and when we get to that point various theoretical methods are available for bleeding off surplus heat; one of them is aiming a neutron beam at the moon. One upside of all this learning the hard way via profligate energy generation and accidental geoengineering taking place since the industrial revolution is that it opens the door to possibilities of regulating the impact of Milankovitch cycles on our civilization…

If you can concentrate energy, eg into a neutron beam, then it's not waste heat. It's a form of energy you still can get useful energy out of.

The only thing you can do with true waste heat on the scale of earth is to radiate it into space.

You might want to look into eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics

Re: You can have geothermal power everywhere if you drill deep enough

#140

Post by oliveshell »

NavinF wrote: post #124
hectormalot wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have one of those. The well is 170m deep. Took 2 guys about half a day to drill it, so that actually doesn’t seem excessive in terms of time required (mostly sand, no rock below my house).

I assume you mean “2 guys and some heavy equipment”? As a kid it took me a whole summer of on-and-off digging to make a 1 meter deep hole for fun.

That’s what they mean. My neighbor had one drilled and the contractors showed up with a huge well-drilling truck.

It’s just a huge vertical drill with segments you add on as it goes deeper, like an oil well drill.

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