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America's Geothermal Breakthrough

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Re: America's Geothermal Breakthrough

#101

Post by thinkcontext »

lostlogin wrote: post #12
Animats wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shallow geothermal works fine for heating. And you can use the ground as a heat sink. But if you want to generate power, you need to get down to where temperatures can boil water. That's deeper than most oil wells. Fervo Energy claims to have found 270C at 3350 meters well depth. That's progress.

> if you want to generate power, you need to get down to where temperatures can boil water. That's deeper than most oil wells. That’s going to be very dependant on location. Here in NZ there are regions where water is boiling at surface level. According to the below, 18% of our power is produced with it. https://www.eeca.govt.nz/insights/energy-in-new-zealand/rene...

You brought the conversation in a circle, since the point of this new technology is the geology you speak of is rare.

Re: America's Geothermal Breakthrough

#102

Post by thinkcontext »

LeFantome wrote: post #80
hunterpayne wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I don't know how economical that is" Sure you do. Think about it. Its just drilling a hole and making electricity from the heat. We have been able to do this for a very long time. So if people aren't really doing it much, its not economical. If it was now becoming economical, the article would describe some new way of doing it that makes it economical. The article doesn't, so you "know" it isn't. PS This has been tr…

The “new” way is plasma drilling.

That's still a science project, they are piloting zapping a small hole to 100m. Very uncertain whether it will amount to anything.

Re: America's Geothermal Breakthrough

#103

Post by micro2588 »

mgfist wrote: post #96
Animats wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're way ahead of the microwave drilling people. There's no reason why this shouldn't work. But they've been at it for 9 years, with considerable funding, and it doesn't really work yet. That's a concern.

> There's no reason why this shouldn't work. But they've been at it for 9 years, with considerable funding, and it doesn't really work yet. That's a concern. It does work. They've had a pilot project producing 3 megawatts since 2023. But scaling takes a lot of time and money, particularly when it's something new and you have to go through a lot of operational learning. Shale took something like 30 years to become a t…

It does work technically I think it is still an open question if it can work economically. There are issues of commercially viable flow rates / thermal decline rates that are harder physical limits you run up against and the pilot design doesn't address. In human timescale terms it's more like heat mining rather than renewable heat due to thermal depletion rate vs replenishment rate. These systems have a targeted lifetime of ~20-30 years and net power will decline over this timespan.

Re: America's Geothermal Breakthrough

#104

Post by thinkcontext »

hunterpayne wrote: post #50
gambiting wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how economical that is, but just as an anecdote - the town I'm from in Poland has district heating to all single family homes, town of about 20k people. And coincidentally, I now live in the UK and a new estate near me has district heating to all the houses they are building, not apartment blocks. So it must make some sense to someone, or they wouldn't be outfitting 100+ houses this way.

"I don't know how economical that is" Sure you do. Think about it. Its just drilling a hole and making electricity from the heat. We have been able to do this for a very long time. So if people aren't really doing it much, its not economical. If it was now becoming economical, the article would describe some new way of doing it that makes it economical. The article doesn't, so you "know" it isn't. PS This has been tr…

> Its just drilling a hole and making electricity from the heat

District heating does not involve making electricity.

Re: America's Geothermal Breakthrough

#105

Post by lostlogin »

Animats wrote: post #91
lostlogin wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you want to generate power, you need to get down to where temperatures can boil water. That's deeper than most oil wells. That’s going to be very dependant on location. Here in NZ there are regions where water is boiling at surface level. According to the below, 18% of our power is produced with it. https://www.eeca.govt.nz/insights/energy-in-new-zealand/rene...

"New Zealand has an abundant supply of geothermal energy because we are located on the boundary between two tectonic plates. ... Total geothermal electricity capacity in New Zealand stands at over 900 MW, making us the fifth largest generator of geothermal in the world. It has been estimated that there is sufficient geothermal resource for another 1,000 MW of electricity generation." That's not all that much. That to…

> That's not all that much.

We don’t have many people. It gets worse’s though, we burn coal and are looking to fund a gas terminal. We have abundant other ways of generating power and subsidise an aluminium smelter for some reason.

Coming up next, data centres.

‘Clean, Green New Zealand.’

Re: America's Geothermal Breakthrough

#106

Post by thinkcontext »

nusl wrote: post #53
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4th paragraph of TFA: > Several companies are now building upon existing techniques for accessing geothermal resources by integrating enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) into operations. While conventional geothermal systems produce energy using hot water or steam, pumped from naturally occurring hydrothermal reservoirs trapped in rock formations underground, EGS use innovative drilling technologies, such as those used…

So it basically says nothing useful other than try to generate hype and make them look good.

No. Current geothermal projects need very specific geology to work, its very rare which is why geothermal is such a small blip in the overall energy picture. Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS), the technique Fervo is using, can create the conditions to be able to generate electricity. The hope is this will greatly expand the number of projects that can be developed.

Doesn't that sound useful to you?

Re: America's Geothermal Breakthrough

#108

Post by micro2588 »

davidw wrote: post #40

There's one of those sites near where I live. The numbers would be amazing if true, but feel a lot like "to good to be true" to me https://www.opb.org/article/2025/10/06/super-hot-rocks-geoth...

Newberry Volcano is too good to be true in that there are few (outside of Yellowstone) equivalent sources of geothermal awesomeness at similar depths in the USA. Good for research bad for generalization of drilling costs to hit similar temperatures. There are federal protections for geothermal drilling anywhere near Yellowstone.

Re: America's Geothermal Breakthrough

#109

Post by wesapien »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #2

I worked on geothermal control systems a decade or so back. There are some less obvious applications for geothermal that reduce electric use (as opposed to generating electricity). The systems I worked on were for cooling larger structures like commercial greenhouses, gov installations and mansions. 64° degree water would be pumped up from 400' down, run thru a series of chillers (for a/c) and then returned undergrou…

One of the problems with the data center boom is its use of fresh water. How does geo-thermal plants use water and how much?

Re: America's Geothermal Breakthrough

#110

Post by typon »

applied_heat wrote: post #107
typon wrote: post #100

What is the point of building energy outside of solar farms? I'm sincerely asking

Night time? But batteries! Several cloudy days in a row? More batteries! Cost? -> a mix of sources becomes attractive

https://imgur.com/a/dV8gk3R

can you find curves like this for any other power source?

also batteries are getting exponentially cheap too

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