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Quaise Energy – Unlocking the true power of clean geothermal energy

quaise.energy

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Re: Quaise Energy – Unlocking the true power of clean geothermal energy

#31

Post by stormbrew »

ajross wrote: post #10

My response here is the same as what I say to proponents of new nuclear technologies: it's gotta work on a balance sheet , not just in a pitch deck. This isn't a new technology enabling new markets and new kinds of growth here, it's just... electricity. And even as a renewable option, it needs to be able to compete not just with fossil fuel generators with-all-the-externalities-factored-in, but with dams and windmill…

> it's gotta work on a balance sheet, not just in a pitch deck.

It shouldn't have to work on either of those things, because neither of those things take any account of externalities.

This attitude that no energy project is worth doing if it's not profitable is how we're going to kill our entire civilization in a few decades. We need to be thinking longer term than "is it cheaper than coal right now?" when the cost of co2 emitting energy sources is literal death and destruction down the line.

Re: Quaise Energy – Unlocking the true power of clean geothermal energy

#32

Post by ajross »

stormbrew wrote: post #31
ajross wrote: post #10

My response here is the same as what I say to proponents of new nuclear technologies: it's gotta work on a balance sheet , not just in a pitch deck. This isn't a new technology enabling new markets and new kinds of growth here, it's just... electricity. And even as a renewable option, it needs to be able to compete not just with fossil fuel generators with-all-the-externalities-factored-in, but with dams and windmill…

> it's gotta work on a balance sheet, not just in a pitch deck. It shouldn't have to work on either of those things, because neither of those things take any account of externalities. This attitude that no energy project is worth doing if it's not profitable is how we're going to kill our entire civilization in a few decades. We need to be thinking longer term than "is it cheaper than coal right now?" when the cost o…

I didn't say "profitable". I said "cheaper than a windmill". That's the standard in this industry. And windmills are really, really cheap. Pick the low hanging fruit, then get fancy. Exotic energy technologies are at best an exercise in premature optimization, and more likely an attempt at soaking the woke masses to fund someone's startup.

Re: Quaise Energy – Unlocking the true power of clean geothermal energy

#33

Post by throwawayboise »

mcculley wrote: post #30
seiferteric wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The magnitude is the same as current power sources that they would be replacing i.e. 100's of MWs to 1-10s of GWs. The amount of heat being brought up would have to be about the same as you would otherwise be getting from coal, gas etc and so the same amount of heat would be vent to the environment.

The claims about geothermal and fusion are that they will make energy ridiculously cheap. Won't we use much more if it is cheap?

Maybe, but what it will do first is replace our usage of other more expensive forms of energy (fossil fuels, presumably)

Re: Quaise Energy – Unlocking the true power of clean geothermal energy

#34

Post by Blammar »

Is the reason they have to drill down 20 km to 500C rather than say 7 km to 175C (presumably a far simpler task) is the equilibrium heat flow?

That is, the water/steam cycle is extracting heat from the surrounding rock. That can only be extracted at a rate that matches the heat inflow, or ideally, ever so slightly less, so as to maintain equilibrium over decades over cubic miles of rock.

Yes, I understand that larger temperature differences increase thermodynamic efficiency. But if the energy produced is constant, efficiency may not matter as much as ease of construction etc.

Re: Quaise Energy – Unlocking the true power of clean geothermal energy

#35

Post by robbedpeter »

14 wrote: post #27
arnihermann wrote: post #12

There has been some effort on going to really deep depths in IDDP (Icelandic Deep Drilling Project) - see https://iddp.is/about/ If I remember correctly, they were never able to hit their goals because of drilling down into magma chambers. The steam coming up was also of a different scale than regular geothermal steam, causing corrosion that has not been dealt with before. As far as I know, the main problem is coming…

From what I saw on an earlier post about this technology is that the mm wave drilling technique actually causes the bedrock walls of the bore hole to turn to a type of glass and then no casing is needed. I will try and find the source on that.

Vitrification of the rock is what it's labeled in the pictures and some of the notes I've seen.

Re: Quaise Energy – Unlocking the true power of clean geothermal energy

#36

Post by robbedpeter »

worik wrote: post #19

What an inadequate website for such bold claims. Here in New Zealand we found that geothermal is not "non polluting". There are a lot of unforeseen consequences with bringing deep water to the surface. Still much better than nuclear that makes our children pay for current consumption or coal that means we are paying for our ancestors consumption....

Iterating over past failures is how progress happens. There will be negative consequences from anything, but the reason for geothermal is that it doesn't have the negative consequences fossil fuels do, and it's cleaner than wind or solar. Also, I'll take localized pollution over global disruption any day.

Re: Quaise Energy – Unlocking the true power of clean geothermal energy

#37

Post by markbnj »

phs318u wrote: post #11

Assuming the millimeter wave drilling technology does in fact hold up (I imagine it draws a LOT of power), the re-use of existing infrastructure (drill a hole at every power station site that boils water to drive a turbine, with existing transmission in place), is brilliant because that's a huge, huge cost avoided - and indeed could be stood up in far less time (barring government approvals) than most mega-scale alte…

You'll be happy to know that movie has been made :). I watched it as a young kid and found it pretty scary. Years later I saw it again and it was of course laughably bad.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059065/

Re: Quaise Energy – Unlocking the true power of clean geothermal energy

#38

Post by snarfy »

asimpletune wrote: post #5

Stupid question but is it possible to cool the earth’s core if this tech was scaled out and used massively?

Not today, but maybe someday.

(1) - The geothermal heat flow from the Earth's interior is estimated to be 47 terawatts

(2) - Human production of energy is even lower at an estimated 160,000 TW-hr for all of year 2019. This corresponds to an average continuous heat flow of about 18 TW

[1]- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_energy_budget#Earth'...

Re: Quaise Energy – Unlocking the true power of clean geothermal energy

#39

Post by ncmncm »

mcculley wrote: post #30
seiferteric wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The magnitude is the same as current power sources that they would be replacing i.e. 100's of MWs to 1-10s of GWs. The amount of heat being brought up would have to be about the same as you would otherwise be getting from coal, gas etc and so the same amount of heat would be vent to the environment.

The claims about geothermal and fusion are that they will make energy ridiculously cheap. Won't we use much more if it is cheap?

Fusion will never be cheap, or used.

Geothermal will not be as cheap as solar, so if we use a lot more power, it will mostly be solar. (Geothermal would be used mainly for baseline, at night.)

Solar intercepts energy already arriving, to use before it is then re-radiated to space. It arrives regardless.

So, no problem. What we have now is a catastrophically big unfolding climate crisis. Even if there were a problem, any small problem is a wonderful substitute for a catastrophically big problem.

Re: Quaise Energy – Unlocking the true power of clean geothermal energy

#40

Post by vmception »

trophycase wrote: post #8
asimpletune wrote: post #5

Stupid question but is it possible to cool the earth’s core if this tech was scaled out and used massively?

The short answer is no, the long answer is no, but the really long answer is that everybody pretends that it's 100% safe but I guarantee nobody predicted global warming occurring when fossil fuels first started being used. There will be secondary effects, we just don't know what they are yet

People predicted global warming occurring when fossil fuels started being used.

A very simple reality left in the footnotes of newspapers at the time, and then tabled to giant research papers and committees as this was the only consensus that was able to be reached by fossil fuel addicted committees. "lets plan to form a commission in a few years, to do a study in a few years and look at the results in a few years for re-evaluation".

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