What it will take to unleash the potential of geothermal power? (2021)
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What it will take to unleash the potential of geothermal power? (2021)
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Re: What it will take to unleash the potential of geothermal power? (2021)
#2>If prices come down, and if it can be deployed widely enough
Drilling deep holes is expensive, prices are unlikely to come down much. Steam generators are expensive too.
Re: What it will take to unleash the potential of geothermal power? (2021)
#3Does the widespread cooling of the planets interior have any possible consequences?
Re: What it will take to unleash the potential of geothermal power? (2021)
#4Does the widespread cooling of the planets interior have any possible consequences?
An astronomer/geophysicist could answer better, but my understanding is nothing we could possibly do would change the planets temperature the tiniest fraction of a degree.
I also read somewhere that if the sun disappeared and the earth flew off into space, life would persist in the oceans for millions of years because it would take that long for them to freeze to the bottom.
Re: What it will take to unleash the potential of geothermal power? (2021)
#5Does the widespread cooling of the planets interior have any possible consequences?
This question is usually asked when conversations about geothermal come up here, and for good reason because it’s a valid question. The long and short of it is that the amount of thermal energy that humans would be able to realistically extract pales in comparison to the amount already lost to heat flux through the surface, the amount generated via radioactive decay and frictional forces from gravity/tidal sources and convection in the core. Some answers on a relevant stack exchange answer with more general calculations [0].
Edit: Off the top of my head, it’s estimated that total core heat is approximately 10^31 J, heat loss at a rate of 47TW, (forgive me for not carrying out the calculation completely or for sources on those numbers, they can be easily searched, I’m on mobile), so the orders of magnitude difference already are so vast it’s a rounding error in siginificant figures.
[0] https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/2302/can-th...
Re: What it will take to unleash the potential of geothermal power? (2021)
#6Does the widespread cooling of the planets interior have any possible consequences?
At the scales were talking about it's somewhere between Going to the beach and getting shot by a swimming dog carrying a gun in its mouth and the problems caused by doing flybys of Jupiter.
Re: What it will take to unleash the potential of geothermal power? (2021)
#7> They require more capital investment than solar or wind projects: $3,000 to $6,000 per kilowatt, compared with $1,700 to $2,100 per kilowatt for wind and solar. (However, a geothermal plant will produce between two and four times as much electricity as a wind or solar plant of the same capacity.)
Solar/wind: 1.7k - 2.1k / kW → N
Geothermal: 3k - 6k / kW → 2N - 4N
Looks like an investment no-brainer.
Re: What it will take to unleash the potential of geothermal power? (2021)
#8Does the widespread cooling of the planets interior have any possible consequences?
> widespread cooling
You might want to look into just how much heat is contained within the Earth, how much escapes naturally every year, and how much is replaced by radioactive decay. Suffice it to say ..... no. There is no way that mankind can extract enough energy to make any real impact on the Earth's interior. The only potential issue here is closer to the surface, i.e. that injecting water into rock strata can trigger small quakes where there were none before (as we've found out via hydrofracking elsewhere).
Suffice it to say there are no easy solutions to the problem of baseload power. Expecting everyone to live in the dark is unrealistic. Expecting solar power to magically stop being inefficient and unworkable in most locations is unrealistic. Expecting the same of wind power likewise. So we're left with not a lot of good options, only less bad ones. That's life... and that's engineering. There are no perfect solutions... just ones you can live with.
Re: What it will take to unleash the potential of geothermal power? (2021)
#9> They require more capital investment than solar or wind projects: $3,000 to $6,000 per kilowatt, compared with $1,700 to $2,100 per kilowatt for wind and solar. (However, a geothermal plant will produce between two and four times as much electricity as a wind or solar plant of the same capacity.) Solar/wind: 1.7k - 2.1k / kW → N Geothermal: 3k - 6k / kW → 2N - 4N Looks like an investment no-brainer.
I don't understand what that second sentence means. What do they mean by "capacity" if it's not electricity generation capability?
Re: What it will take to unleash the potential of geothermal power? (2021)
#10Does the widespread cooling of the planets interior have any possible consequences?
> widespread cooling You might want to look into just how much heat is contained within the Earth, how much escapes naturally every year, and how much is replaced by radioactive decay. Suffice it to say ..... no. There is no way that mankind can extract enough energy to make any real impact on the Earth's interior. The only potential issue here is closer to the surface, i.e. that injecting water into rock strata can…
it's comparable to human energy consumption