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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

#221

Post by MrDresden »

rconti wrote: post #66

Iceland's hot water was a culture shock to me in 2 ways: 1. The host at our apartment encouraged us to leave the windows cracked and the heat on for good air circulation. 2. The hot water (at the taps) has a sulfer smell, because it's (also) piped geothermal water. My host explained they also had a water heater upstairs in their home because they preferred "heated cold water" over "hot water", which is a funny distin…

Note though that the sulfur smell from hot water in Iceland is only a thing in certain areas in Reykjavik, and perhaps some locations around the island.

This is due to the hot water in those regions literally being pumped out of the ground and into homes, and on a completely separate plumbing system. Majority of other areas use heat exchangers with pristine cold water, thus no smell nor taste is transferred.

So if you are staying in any other municipality in the capitol, you can use the hot water in cooking directly without boiling cold water. It's the same.

Re: The time has finally come for geothermal energy

#222

Post by mns »

boringg wrote: post #133

Sorry the time had not come for geothermal. It will always be an expensive niche market. Will there be more? Sure but its ever going to fly globally.

It probably also depends on where you are and how deep you need to drill. It seems to be working out for Munich in Germany, there are a couple of city districts (including mine) that are heated by geothermal, and they invested in this since the early 2000s. Can't really find an english page for the whole project though: https://www.swm.de/unternehmen/geothermie

Re: The time has finally come for geothermal energy

#223

Post by cycomanic »

kaonwarb wrote: post #210
_whiteCaps_ wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Caterpillar provides some really neat small scale flywheel UPS - used in places like hospitals where it would be very bad to lose power. They last long enough for the diesel gennies to start up.

I saw these in the basement of a data center about 11-12 years ago. Most steampunk thing I've seen in real life.

Here's a bigger one at ASDEX (a fusion experiment):

https://www.ipp.mpg.de/4244138/generatoren

Re: The time has finally come for geothermal energy

#224

Post by cycomanic »

robocat wrote: post #162
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…

> pumped hydro for long term storage. You are using long-term in an extremely vague way. Pumped hydro is not a solution for seasonal storage or yearly storage. Seasonal variation can be a problem in higher latitudes. For example we have a serious problem in New Zealand where our existing "green" hydro lakes are sometimes low and our economy is affected: creating national power crises during dry years. We use coal-bur…

The way I understand it from people working in the field, is that the issue isn't really that lakes/rivers are running dry, but more that most hydropower is produced on the South Island while most consumption is on the North Island and the connection is woefully inadequate (typical NZ problem, never invest in infrastructure just keep bandaiding it). That said installing wind and solar (both of which are plentiful) would do a lot towards alleviating the problems, but there are the issues of the existing generators lobbying and the political climate, where the conservative party still has a significant number of politicians who think climate change isn't real.

Re: The time has finally come for geothermal energy

#225

Post by namibj »

jamescrowley wrote: post #112
iso1631 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Nothing to do with the blackout in Spain - https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/what-caused-iberian-... - voltage surge and various thermal power generators failing to provide the voltage correction services they were being paid for But yes, grid following alone does not provided the required stability - synthetic inertia etc needed

True DC grids avoid this stability issue by not having a phase and allowing power flow to pretty much just self-balance through voltage gradients and clipping of connections/devices to whatever current they can handle.

With enough voltage range that wouldn't even need the tricky loops of voltage regulation common in incandescent-targeted legacy AC grids.

Re: The time has finally come for geothermal energy

#226

Post by cycomanic »

psunavy03 wrote: post #76
buu700 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, that promise of fission made sense from a purely scientific and mathematical perspective, before running into the practical realities of how its externalities interact with real-world politics. Fission is expensive because in practice it turns out we care quite a lot about proper waste management, non-proliferation, and meltdown prevention. In a world where anyone could just YOLO any reactor into producti…

I fully understand that waste management of fission reactors is a Very Big Deal. But I still stand behind the argument that opposing nuclear power in the 70s and onward is possibly the biggest own goal the environmental movement has ever achieved. At worst, nuclear waste contaminates a discrete section of the Earth. Climate change affects literally everywhere. The correct answer would have been to aggressively roll o…

The problem with that argument is that nowhere did environmentalists in the 70s or 80s prevent nuclear power plants from being build. Nuclear has received much more subsidies than solar or wind ever did (even if we ignore the indirect military->civil subsidies) and it still never became economical. Back in the 70s and 80s coal was much cheaper, and now solar and wind are so much cheaper it doesn't make any sense to invest in nuclear. The nuclear power plants that were build, got built largely for political reasons (energy independence, and military), and the reason why not more got build was not those pesky environmentalists, but that it was expensive.

Re: The time has finally come for geothermal energy

#227

Post by euroderf »

colechristensen wrote: post #159
euroderf wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When heating is dirt (heh) cheap, it doesn't cost much to do things like put big hot tubs and heated pools outdoors, like they do in Reykjaviks swim halls. It's really nice.

One of the benefits of over-provisioning solar is that fun "wasteful" things that use a lot of energy become practical and non-harmful.

Agreed. I myself have always wanted a hobby smelting bauxite.

Re: The time has finally come for geothermal energy

#228

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

cbmuser wrote: post #110
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...

The French are wholly unable to build new nuclear power.

Flamanville 3 is 7x over budget and 12 years late on a 5 year construction program. The EPR2 program is in absolute shambles.

Currently they can’t even agree on how to fund the absolutely insanely bonkers subsidies.

Now targeting investment decision in H2 2026. And the French government just fell and was reformed because they are underwater in debt and have a spending problem which they can’t agree on how to fix.

A massive handout to the dead end nuclear industry sounds like the perfect solution!

Re: The time has finally come for geothermal energy

#229

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

hvb2 wrote: post #176
aloha2436 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France is a western country with its own economic and labour troubles. The enormous expense of building nukes in the US is entirely its own making and much more complicated than just "western" inefficiency.

You might want to look up flammanville. They built a new reactor there and that also took 20 years or so and was way over budget. We've built a lot of nuclear in the last century and then largely stopped. A lot of the know how is gone which is what we're paying for now. Also, in France, all those reactors were largely the same leading to economies of scale when building them. Everything we build today is essentially…

The French were also practicing negative learning by doing.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014...

Re: The time has finally come for geothermal energy

#230

Post by superultra »

testing22321 wrote: post #136
cbmuser wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or just build out nuclear like France and pay just 20 Cents per kWh. https://particulier.edf.fr/content/dam/2-Actifs/Documents/Of...

The two nukes that recently came on line in the US were so over budget and timeline that all customers now pay a “surcharge” on their bill to pay for it. Western counties building nukes is so expensive it makes the cost of electricity go up.

Can confirm, I live in Georgia.

The real stickler is that just from pure lucky timing, data centers will likely be the direct beneficiaries of the third reactor coming online at the Vogle plant here in Georgia. So taxpayers foot and will foot the bill, and meanwhile our governor and mayor are tripping over themselves giving tax breaks to data centers.

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