31–40 of 44 posts
"AltaRock estimates that just 0.1 percent of the planet's heat content could supply humanity's total energy needs for 2 million years." Ummm.. What?
There's a lot of heat down there, and more is continually being generated through radioactive decay and tidal forces.
It 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…
It 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…
https://dandelionenergy.com/ is one company trying to scale this. In general, Americans don't want to pay a huge cost upfront for some efficiency gains. Especially since traditionally fossil energy was cheap. Also look at heat pump clothes dryers. They're a win in that you don't need a vent (and associated vent cleaning), but they cost more upfront. Hopefully these are areas where the government can provide low inter…
I live in a country that loves heatpumps, just about every home has one, but heat pump dryers have a bad rep. While they are energy efficient they are very slow to dry clothes, about 2 hours longer than a resistance electric dryer for a small-medium load (1.5 hours vs 3.5 hours).
It 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…
https://dandelionenergy.com/ is one company trying to scale this. In general, Americans don't want to pay a huge cost upfront for some efficiency gains. Especially since traditionally fossil energy was cheap. Also look at heat pump clothes dryers. They're a win in that you don't need a vent (and associated vent cleaning), but they cost more upfront. Hopefully these are areas where the government can provide low inter…
They don't really work at low ambient temperatures, so as someone who can only have a dryer in an unheated garage, that's not an option sadly.
As an RF engineer, this is a very creative application of mmW and I hope can be successful, but is not without very significant challenges which the company has made no claims to have solved. The issue is, mm-waves (and all high frequency RF really) are very sensitive to distance and losses. As a random example [1] gives some numbers for theoretical and precision machined waveguides in these frequencies. In the very…
Getting cuttings out of the borehole is a solved problem with present drilling technics used in the Oil & Gas industry or geothermal. The drilling fluidsbrings them back. One needs the drilling fluids (mud) to avoid the well to collapse, I guess Petra is staying clear of deep borehole drilling because they can't operate their technology with drilling mud present. Also the deeper you go, the smaller the hole and they may face miniaturizion issues too.
"AltaRock estimates that just 0.1 percent of the planet's heat content could supply humanity's total energy needs for 2 million years." Ummm.. What?
It 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…
Things leak. It sounds like it should be easy to fix, but it really isn't. Not at scale, for a competitive price. There was a fad to build homes into the sides of hills. It turns out if you want to do this, you have to do a significant amount of engineering and work if you don't want to have all your furnishings, electronics, books, and clothes to be ruined. I'm sure people will have examples where it has worked, but…
Pretty even temperature year-round. The floors are never, ever cold. HVAC costs around $90/month and it gets from -30 to 104 around here.
Never had one tiny ounce of water problems, not in 30 years.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Things leak. It sounds like it should be easy to fix, but it really isn't. Not at scale, for a competitive price. There was a fad to build homes into the sides of hills. It turns out if you want to do this, you have to do a significant amount of engineering and work if you don't want to have all your furnishings, electronics, books, and clothes to be ruined. I'm sure people will have examples where it has worked, but…
Not really true. My house is built into the side of a hill. We just bulldozed and dug and put good drainage around the foundation, inside and out. Pretty even temperature year-round. The floors are never, ever cold. HVAC costs around $90/month and it gets from -30 to 104 around here. Never had one tiny ounce of water problems, not in 30 years.
It 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…
Sad thing it's not particularly hard to make a radically more efficient home. One that will pay off many times over during the life of the house. However it costs the builder more, and saves money for the buyer. That disconnect means houses are built as cheap as zoning allows.
I've seen houses designed for below freezing weather that can be heated with 100 watts! The tricks weren't particularly expensive. Great insulation (of course), which of course can cause stale air and even unhealthy air. But then they engineered in the healthy amount of air from outside, but then had a energy recovery system where the exhausted air would heat/cool the incoming air so you could get a high flow with minimal energy losses. It's getting to the point where resistive heat, the crudest of heaters, is used despite being 3-4x less efficient than a heat pump. But the house is so efficient that the electricity used is minimal.
So no need to move 100 tons of rock, worry about leaks, safety issues, put up with worse windows/lighting, and where to put the 100 tons of rock, etc. Just use more insulation and a bit of smarts on energy efficient air handling.