111–120 of 314 posts
Yeah right. They drilled in Strasbourg, France, to get this "free" energy. When they entered production, the city was experiencing an earthquake every month, waking the city at night. After a magnitude 4 earthquake, they finally shut down the plant. A town in Germany is devastated also due to geothermal power: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staufen_im_Breisgau
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No, I mean we should use the motion of the water, not its heat. Like in hydroelectricity where water spins a turbine instead we are using a steam generator like gas fired plants
Geothermal does use the "motion" of the water.
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> Anything that works would be used by the oil and gas industry, and if they're not trying it, one suspects it might not be working. To flip that around: this would imply that the most under-investigated-in-industry approaches to deep hole boring would be the ones that destroy the economic value of any oil-and-gas in the ground, no? Ones that make the ground radioactive, perhaps. Or that would set any potential oil f…
> this would imply that the most under-investigated-in-industry approaches to deep hole boring would be the ones that destroy the economic value of any oil-and-gas in the ground, That is only one explanation to why a technology would be among the most under-investigated-in-industry approaches. There are many others, such as: - It does not work at all. - It is more expensive than traditional methods - It is illegal in…
Whereas for geothermal, conventional drilling isn't useful enough for it.
How much energy is in the core of the Earth? What happens if we cooled the core to the point that it became solid? I’m guessing that would be bad, but is it something that’s not conceivably possible on any human timescale?
That would be very, very bad, but if you look at the numbers, like others pointed out - this is not an issue with our current tech.
I would be more worried about earthquakes and co. because deep plate tectonic is not understood well.
And when you cool one area significantly, that creates tension in the rock, because of the heat difference to other hotter areas.
Assuming this works, tech still won't save us alone. Pure thermal (ie. just energy, no GHG) climate change is right around the corner if energy use keeps going up exponentially and we keep reducing earth's albedo. Ecosystems are still being obliterated for cattle and mining. All ghg free electricity will do is buy a few decades to end (and in the west, reverse) growth. Possibly the only thing that will give civilisat…
> Pure thermal (ie. just energy, no GHG) climate change is right around the corner if energy use keeps going up exponentially and we keep reducing earth's albedo. What makes you think so? What growth rates are you assuming? How long is your time horizon?
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Yes, but it will be orders of magnitude less than the sum total energy of solar energy across the total surface of the earth.
Yeah. All civilization consumes around 17 TW of energy while the sun is constantly bombarding the Earth with 173,000 TW. We could rebase all of civilization on geothermal and the extra heat in the atmosphere would be a rounding error to the sun's energy.
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Seismic disturbances are generally a concern for dense urban areas. It seems unlikely that agricultural areas would care that much.
"It seems unlikely that agricultural areas would care that much." Why would you think that? Because the peasants are all too stupid to notice an earthquake that damage their houses? Sure, fewer people would be affected, than in a dense city, but the problem solution of: out of sight, out of mind, is fascinating.
Yes, exactly. I also don’t expect dense residential buildings prone to earthquakes to be prevalent in low density sparsely populated agricultural areas.
There is nothing “fascinating” except that stating facts about rural areas immediately brings out the worst kinds of trolls out of the woodwork.
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The Staufen im Breisgau mishap is one of the learning experiences of geothermal energy, like analyzing the type of rock that you plan to drill through, and maybe not drill in a town center. But apart from that, you seem to have misinterpreted the Quaise technology, mixing apples and oranges. This is not conventional drilling which can cause water to flow into adjacent rock (not to mention fracking which deliberately…
A conventional drill can be cemented as well, the technology is already existing but mishap happened anyway Another town near Strasbourg is devastated like staufen Im breigsbau: Lochwiller. With the same issue as staufen, except that in this case it was a family who drilled to heat their home.