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The time has finally come for geothermal energy

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Re: The time has finally come for geothermal energy

#101

Post by danans »

m463 wrote: post #83
danans wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a different "geothermal" - the correct name is "ground source heat pump" or in your neighbor's case, a pond-source heat pump. Those exploit the temperature stability that occurs some small numbers or meters subsurface for heating in the winter and cooling in the summer. "Geothermal energy" involves drilling down to hot rock to tap intense heat to run a turbine that produces electricity.

wouldn't it be "natural geothermal" if the pond is a naturally occurring hot spring?

It wouldn't work very well for cooling then

Re: The time has finally come for geothermal energy

#102

Post by quacked »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #64
quacked wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We can't even declare total victory with LED bulbs over incandescent. The LED bulbs I have access to (whatever's in the aisles at Home Depot, Costco, etc.) fail much more frequently than the incandescent bulbs I used to buy, and produce an uglier light that is less warm even on the softest/warmest color settings. My suspicion is that incandescents were at the "end" of their product lifecycle (high quality available…

[CITATION NEEDED] They do not. If you take the mean, median, and mode of the failure lifetime for LED bulbs sold at these stores and compare them to the failure times of incandescent bulbs, I also guarantee you are empirically wrong here.

I believe this is true for the LED technology compared to the incandescent technology as a whole, but I'm simply turning over bulbs at a far higher rate than I did in the incandescent days. Often the LED bulbs are failing within a year under normal usage patterns. It's possible that using modern LEDs in old fixtures is causing some kind of issue.

Re: The time has finally come for geothermal energy

#103

Post by davidw »

psunavy03 wrote: post #100
davidw wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of housing politics from 'old school' environmentalist groups are a pretty big own goal as well. Denser urban living is pretty energy efficient, and forcing lengthy commutes on people because of NIMBYism is a huge waste.

People want houses. Planners can either yell and stomp their feet about this or adapt to circumstances. It's like electric cars. People want cars. Better they have the ability to have an electric SUV or pickup, because if you try to force them into little tiny econoboxes or lecture them about how they should really be using mass transit, they're just going to flip you the bird and walk away. Similarly, better to have…

People want a place to call home. Those come in many shapes and sizes. Denser living does not mean a smaller living space. By building 'up', you can provide both.

The only ones demanding anything are those who show up to try and stop apartments.

Re: The time has finally come for geothermal energy

#104

Post by bryanlarsen »

iso1631 wrote: post #98
jmward01 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The right answer is 'yes to all the above'. Yes, we need solar. Yes, we need wind. Yes, we need batteries and, yes, we should be looking at geothermal. Solar has shown us, again, how artificially holding back a technology for decades has massive costs. Investing a few billion into geothermal right now is cheap and can only lead to a more durable energy infrastructure in the future. There are all sorts of benefits to…

One thing which is needed too is spinning load, the grid depends on having enough inertia to maintain the frequency. Flywheels I assume would do that.

Inverters and batteries (or any other DC source) are also very good at doing this.

Re: The time has finally come for geothermal energy

#105

Post by hluska »

Animats wrote: post #87
pjc50 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drilling is one of those things which used to be extremely expensive but has very gradually come down in price. Thanks, ironically, to the oil industry. It's unsexy because there's no "silver bullet" waiting in the wings. It's also quite hard to find suitably hot rocks suitably close to the surface. Focusing on fusion .. I think that's a legacy of 60s SF, when the fission revolution was still promising "energy too ch…

> Drilling is one of those things which used to be extremely expensive but has very gradually come down in price. Thanks, ironically, to the oil industry. It's unsexy because there's no "silver bullet" waiting in the wings. It's also quite hard to find suitably hot rocks suitably close to the surface. That's basically it. Most geothermal plants today are in locations where there are hot rocks, maybe geysers, close to…

The economics change when you’re in oil country. My beautiful little province has oil wells drilled between 250 and 2900 metres. Due to corporate ‘issues’ many of these wells are orphaned and remediation becomes a provincial problem. With deep holes and provincially owned electricity and gas companies, geothermal makes more economic sense; it’s robbing a benefit from a big cost centre.

I went to high school with two guys who are working on geothermal as a means to remediate orphan wells. I’m biased in their favour, but the numbers make a lot of sense.

Re: The time has finally come for geothermal energy

#106

Post by iso1631 »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #104
iso1631 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing which is needed too is spinning load, the grid depends on having enough inertia to maintain the frequency. Flywheels I assume would do that.

Inverters and batteries (or any other DC source) are also very good at doing this.

Not grid following inverters, or "any DC source", as we saw in Spain in Summer

Re: The time has finally come for geothermal energy

#107

Post by garbageoverflow »

I was wondering how feasible it would be to reuse abandoned oil pumps for geothermal energy. A closed loop system [1] would probably be the most appropriate, with energy generation by spinning of a turbine by steam that gets recycled. I don't have the expertise and was wondering if someone can share a bit of knowledge with the rest of us.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-loop_geothermal

Re: The time has finally come for geothermal energy

#108

Post by cbmuser »

bluGill wrote: post #92
XorNot wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2025 the power consumption of my state (NSW, Australia) on any given day will be greater then 5 GW. https://www.aemo.com.au/energy-systems/electricity/national-... This "there is no base load" idea is a ridiculous myth trivially disproven: every grid on the planet has continuous demands on it and they're quite significant (5 GW is about 50% the day time peaks). It doesn't matter what the cost is, because later thi…

You misunderstand the point though. Sure there is always 5GW of demand - but we don't need generation that always supply 5GW cheap since wind/solar is much cheaper for base load. What we need is non-base load generation that can jump in at a moment's notice when needed because wind/solar isn't enough. Previously we would use those peak plants from when there was 6GW of demand (or whatever), but now between those peak…

We’re trying that in Germany while we’re still heavily dependent on coal while our electricity prices are twice as much compared to France.

I’m sorry, but wind and solar may be cheap, but they don’t provide cheap electricity 24/7.

Re: The time has finally come for geothermal energy

#109

Post by cbmuser »

jamescrowley wrote: post #89
XorNot wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2025 the power consumption of my state (NSW, Australia) on any given day will be greater then 5 GW. https://www.aemo.com.au/energy-systems/electricity/national-... This "there is no base load" idea is a ridiculous myth trivially disproven: every grid on the planet has continuous demands on it and they're quite significant (5 GW is about 50% the day time peaks). It doesn't matter what the cost is, because later thi…

Baseload is traditionally about generation, not consumption. And baseload generation only makes sense when it is the cheapest option. When solar and wind produce at near-zero marginal cost, running inflexible baseload beside them just forces cheaper generation to switch off, driving up system costs. What the grid needs is dispatchable capacity - batteries, hydro, gas peakers (if we must) and demand shifting - that ca…

It sounds great in theory but doesn’t work in practice.

Just compare Germany to France.

Re: The time has finally come for geothermal energy

#110

Post by cbmuser »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #57

Baseload generation is useless in 2025. It's in the name; it's called "base load", not "base generation". Base generation was a cost optimization. Planners noticed that load never dropped below a specific level, and that cheapest power was from a plant designed to run 100% of the time rather than one designed to turn on and off frequently. So they could reduce cost by building a mix of base and peaker generation plan…

Or just build out nuclear like France and pay just 20 Cents per kWh.

https://particulier.edf.fr/content/dam/2-Actifs/Documents/Of...

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