AltaRock Energy Melts Rock with Millimeter Waves for Geothermal Wells (2020)
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Re: AltaRock Energy Melts Rock with Millimeter Waves for Geothermal Wells (2020)
#2It seems pants on head crazy that a mere 20 feet or so below the ground it's a livable and pretty comfortable temperature year round, virtually worldwide. And yet we spend an enormous amount of money, time and energy heating and then cooling our living spaces by almost any other means possible. Yes, the occasional home has geothermal, but the fact that it's still the exception baffles me. Heck, if you have a well or even city water then you are already piping 55-degree fluid into your living space and a lot of the complicated work is already done.
I get that there are some tough engineering challenges involved, but as a species we don't seem all that interested in solving them relative to the effort we've put into many other endeavors.
Re: AltaRock Energy Melts Rock with Millimeter Waves for Geothermal Wells (2020)
#3It seems pants on head crazy that a mere 20 feet or so below the ground it's a livable and pretty comfortable temperature year round, virtually worldwide. And yet we spend an enormous amount of money, time and energy heating and then cooling our living spaces by almost any other means possible. Yes, the occasional home has geothermal, but the fact that it's still the exception baffles me. Heck, if you have a well or…
I’d support some directed project to figuring out how to do geothermal at scale and most efficiently/effectively. Call it long term infrastructure investment.
Re: AltaRock Energy Melts Rock with Millimeter Waves for Geothermal Wells (2020)
#4It seems pants on head crazy that a mere 20 feet or so below the ground it's a livable and pretty comfortable temperature year round, virtually worldwide. And yet we spend an enormous amount of money, time and energy heating and then cooling our living spaces by almost any other means possible. Yes, the occasional home has geothermal, but the fact that it's still the exception baffles me. Heck, if you have a well or…
When you can just burn coal/gas/oil to heat and cool your house and say 'la la la' loud enough to not hear the environment dying around you, it really is the best option.
Re: AltaRock Energy Melts Rock with Millimeter Waves for Geothermal Wells (2020)
#5It seems pants on head crazy that a mere 20 feet or so below the ground it's a livable and pretty comfortable temperature year round, virtually worldwide. And yet we spend an enormous amount of money, time and energy heating and then cooling our living spaces by almost any other means possible. Yes, the occasional home has geothermal, but the fact that it's still the exception baffles me. Heck, if you have a well or…
> Yes, the occasional home has geothermal
The use of the word geothermal like that feels like a silly marketing thing to me. The "geothermal" you are referring to here, is just a ground source heat pump. A ground source heat pump is drawing heat from the ground, exploiting the huge (but not unlimited) thermal mass of the soil. That thermal mass is the same reason it has a stable temperature year round.
Ground source heat pumps do not use geothermal energy, i.e. the 25–30 °C/km heat gradient of the Earth. AltaRock is actually trying to use geothermal energy. These are two very different concepts, so we should avoid conflating them, and use different words to refer to them.
Re: AltaRock Energy Melts Rock with Millimeter Waves for Geothermal Wells (2020)
#6It seems pants on head crazy that a mere 20 feet or so below the ground it's a livable and pretty comfortable temperature year round, virtually worldwide. And yet we spend an enormous amount of money, time and energy heating and then cooling our living spaces by almost any other means possible. Yes, the occasional home has geothermal, but the fact that it's still the exception baffles me. Heck, if you have a well or…
I’d support some directed project to figuring out how to do geothermal at scale and most efficiently/effectively. Call it long term infrastructure investment.
My partner has an idea on how to conduct this process using our form of cheap energy. please send us you address at email morphle at ziggo dot nl
Re: AltaRock Energy Melts Rock with Millimeter Waves for Geothermal Wells (2020)
#7It seems pants on head crazy that a mere 20 feet or so below the ground it's a livable and pretty comfortable temperature year round, virtually worldwide. And yet we spend an enormous amount of money, time and energy heating and then cooling our living spaces by almost any other means possible. Yes, the occasional home has geothermal, but the fact that it's still the exception baffles me. Heck, if you have a well or…
As a guy with poor understanding of construction techniques I sure as hell agree. Looked into it for my farm. I can’t build much underground due to a very high water table.
Re: AltaRock Energy Melts Rock with Millimeter Waves for Geothermal Wells (2020)
#8It seems pants on head crazy that a mere 20 feet or so below the ground it's a livable and pretty comfortable temperature year round, virtually worldwide. And yet we spend an enormous amount of money, time and energy heating and then cooling our living spaces by almost any other means possible. Yes, the occasional home has geothermal, but the fact that it's still the exception baffles me. Heck, if you have a well or…
When you can just burn coal/gas/oil to heat and cool your house and say 'la la la' loud enough to not hear the environment dying around you, it really is the best option.
Emissions costs are a solution to that. Sadly, some countries are not part of these agreements.
Re: AltaRock Energy Melts Rock with Millimeter Waves for Geothermal Wells (2020)
#9It seems pants on head crazy that a mere 20 feet or so below the ground it's a livable and pretty comfortable temperature year round, virtually worldwide. And yet we spend an enormous amount of money, time and energy heating and then cooling our living spaces by almost any other means possible. Yes, the occasional home has geothermal, but the fact that it's still the exception baffles me. Heck, if you have a well or…
I'd say the overwhelming population of the earth does not want to live underground like a worm. The first level down might be OK for some if they still had access to natural sunlight, but everyone further down, especially to the depths that we would need to move tower blocks underground, would have a miserable existence.
Re: AltaRock Energy Melts Rock with Millimeter Waves for Geothermal Wells (2020)
#10It seems pants on head crazy that a mere 20 feet or so below the ground it's a livable and pretty comfortable temperature year round, virtually worldwide. And yet we spend an enormous amount of money, time and energy heating and then cooling our living spaces by almost any other means possible. Yes, the occasional home has geothermal, but the fact that it's still the exception baffles me. Heck, if you have a well or…
That's easy to say, but nobody is stoping you or anyone else that thinks that way from building yourselves a home deep underground. There's no real engineering challenge, we know how to dig very big, very deep pits, the problem is the costs are astronomical relative to conventional housing. Not to mention the huge energy cost and thus carbon footprint of that kind of construction.
It's conceivable those costs might be reduced, maybe the Boring Company will find a solution, but the fact is it involves moving an awful lot of very heavy material.