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You can have geothermal power everywhere if you drill deep enough

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Re: You can have geothermal power everywhere if you drill deep enough

#221

Post by qiskit »

lwouis wrote: post #182
jokethrowaway wrote: post #40

The comments on the article make me lose faith in humanity. Amazing technology though, this coupled with solar could really make people independent of centralised energy systems

Independence is a pipe-dream. You always depend on others and physical resources. If you install a solar panel to "become independent from centralized energy systems", you're moving from a dependence to established energy networks to another type of dependence. You now depend on people making, delivering, maintaining panels for you. As well as the batteries to store the energy. No-one can make or repair this take the…

> If you install a solar panel to "become independent from centralized energy systems", you're moving from a dependence to established energy networks to another type of dependence. You now depend on people making, delivering, maintaining panels for you. As well as the batteries to store the energy.

Thank you. People claim they are independent because they are off-grid and using solar panels. But are they really? Solar panels last about 10 years and then what? Of course they are dependent on the grid that provides them the solar panels and batteries.

Re: You can have geothermal power everywhere if you drill deep enough

#222

Post by JulianMorrison »

raducu wrote: post #166
kragen wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conventional “mechanical” drilling isn’t very heat tolerant because heat softens metal. For oil and even gas drilling it doesn’t need to be; they’re located in cooler rock. For supercritical steam EGS heat tolerance is a sine qua non. Conventional approaches might still work best, but it’s also plausible that what’s best for gas isn’t best for EGS.

But if we get to temperatures that destory metals, isn't it enough? Why don't we drill to whatever is the termal limit, make a big cavity there, install radiators there and just heat the watter to that temperature and take it out to surface where we can heat homes. I know this is done in Bucharest for a water park (to much lesser depths because apparently we have hot springs near Bucharest). Do we need to reach magma…

Steel in particular softens at a much lower temperature than it melts. And it doesn't need to soften much to make a really long thin drill bit bend.

Re: You can have geothermal power everywhere if you drill deep enough

#223

Post by karaterobot »

Glawen wrote: post #10

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

Assuming this technology works, it's worth that risk. To be fair, that's a big assumption; most things don't. Meanwhile, already past the point of no return, the inconvenient situation with our climate gets worse while we try to negotiate. This is probably nothing, but it's worth trying.

At the end of this article, there's a bit about the "tech won't save us" crowd. Not saying you're in it, just that it surprises me that such a thing could exist at all. At this point, what the hell else could save us? God, positivity, bans on plastic straws?

Re: You can have geothermal power everywhere if you drill deep enough

#224

Post by theptip »

Animats wrote: post #45

Microwave drilling. It's a known thing at small scale.[1] If it can be done at larger scale, it ought to have other applications. Doing it downhole at the end of a long pipe string is going to be much harder than doing it in a factory. So why isn't this an industrial machining process already, like plasma cutting? GA Drilling was pushing plasma drilling back in 2018.[2] They're still pushing it, but not making holes.…

Very interesting context here, thanks. Do you know of any write-ups that give a deeper picture of the progress of any of these (or other similar) projects? It seems that there are tough problems to be solved, but we're just seeing the marketing materials.

Re: You can have geothermal power everywhere if you drill deep enough

#225

Post by theptip »

The idea of drilling deep geothermal to repurpose existing fossil plants is an elegant one. I imagine others have thought of this before, but it was new to me. Being able to take over the existing equipment (turbines, power transmission connections) seems appealing.

Of course, it all depends on how expensive the drilling process is vs. the existing capital asset in the turbines, but maybe you could hit a price point where the repurposed geothermal plant is way cheaper than new solar / gas builds in the 2030s? This would be a transitional tailwind, just when we need it. Down the road, these plants would become more expensive because you'd also need to build new turbines/transmission lines. And at that time maybe solar or fusion is a cheaper solution (or not, who knows). But this could really help with the transition away from fossil fuels, if it was delivered next decade or two.

A question - does deep drilling like this have any downsides, as fracking does? I'm guessing it's less bad since you're not pushing pressurized fluid into the bedrock, instead you're just making a pipe that contains the water.

Re: You can have geothermal power everywhere if you drill deep enough

#226

Post by masklinn »

eru wrote: post #199
masklinn wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Japan deals with natural earthquakes all the time, japan has quake-safety standards. They were written in blood, and don’t exist in places which don’t routinely have earthquakes, because quake safety is constraining and expensive. Retrofitting an entire country for quake safety because you’ve decided to create artificial earthquakes is inane.

Who suggested an entire country? We are talking about small-ish areas.

You have literally no idea how wide the geological destabilisation would reach.

Re: You can have geothermal power everywhere if you drill deep enough

#227

Post by fly-guy »

theptip wrote: post #225

The idea of drilling deep geothermal to repurpose existing fossil plants is an elegant one. I imagine others have thought of this before, but it was new to me. Being able to take over the existing equipment (turbines, power transmission connections) seems appealing. Of course, it all depends on how expensive the drilling process is vs. the existing capital asset in the turbines, but maybe you could hit a price point…

ENergy conversion equipment can't easily be re-purposed for geothermal. The temperatures are usually much lower, and the working fluids are often hydrocarbons instead of steam.

Re: You can have geothermal power everywhere if you drill deep enough

#228

Post by fly-guy »

theptip wrote: post #224
Animats wrote: post #45

Microwave drilling. It's a known thing at small scale.[1] If it can be done at larger scale, it ought to have other applications. Doing it downhole at the end of a long pipe string is going to be much harder than doing it in a factory. So why isn't this an industrial machining process already, like plasma cutting? GA Drilling was pushing plasma drilling back in 2018.[2] They're still pushing it, but not making holes.…

Very interesting context here, thanks. Do you know of any write-ups that give a deeper picture of the progress of any of these (or other similar) projects? It seems that there are tough problems to be solved, but we're just seeing the marketing materials.

Another thing that should be considered: how do you keep the hole open while drilling? At extreme P and T, the hole will close in on the drillstring. Also, fluids turn very nasty in those conditions. You'll need some unobtanium and some of Superman's suit material.

Re: You can have geothermal power everywhere if you drill deep enough

#229

Post by javajosh »

InDemoVeritas wrote: post #208
hedora wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've long wanted to put some money into an eco terror fund. It would buy controlling interests in all the companies that make some critical, specialized and heavily patented piece of modern internal combustion engines or coal turbines. Then, it'd wreck the factories, and patent troll everyone else into not producing. Money is speech, and that would be protected political speech, right? :-)

As my wise auntie says,”You can’t see clearly through the bottom of a pint glass.” Are you not drunk on energy? Warm or cool at will, well fed and clothed, able to travel and communicate? There’s no collecting if you bet on the apocalypse.

>There’s no collecting if you bet on the apocalypse.

That's just not true. Misery and suffering is it's own reward, to some. This is arguably the main point of Orwell's 1984, when O'Brien explains to Winston Smith why they bother torturing people before killing them. O'Brien says that to knowingly cause suffering in someone is the ultimate expression of power, and it is axiomatic to him that power is good in-and-of-itself.

Re: You can have geothermal power everywhere if you drill deep enough

#230

Post by fly-guy »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #58
Glawen wrote: post #10

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

I believe you may have missed what these folks are doing differently. To put it into context, geothermal energy that taps underground water reservoirs near heat sources has been shown to cause earthquakes and other not good side effects. All of those effects are associated with water being released from aquifers that were previously sealed, or ground changes due to water incursion into previously dry structures (whic…

Great start, but one important factor is missing from this analysis: The surface area (for heat exchange) of a closed-loop borehole is tiny compared to the surface area in a natural hydrothermal system. The walls of the borehole will cool off relatively quickly due to the low thermal conductivity of rock, and you'll soon be unable to make power. Conventional geothermal gets around this by pulling from very large reservoirs that include natural convection and huge fracture surface area.

This means that a closed loop system needs many many many miles of boreholes in order to last long enough to pay off.

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