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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

#81

Post by marcosdumay »

glenstein wrote: post #43
outside1234 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The example you chose is of a mirror based Solar system, which yes, is an obsolete technology. Direct solar continues to be installed at greater amounts every year and coal is economically uncompetitive with basic anything (which is why it is collapsing), and especially against natural gas.

You're exactly right and it raises a question for me. Why do energy generation topics bring people out of the woodworks who cite some very idiosycratic one-off and use it to make out-of-proportion declarations about the utility of a given technology? This is the second one I've seen suggesting solar is doomed when they mean mirrors. On twitter I saw someone claim PV is useless for heat because non-PV solar water heat…

> Why do energy generation topics bring people out of the woodworks who cite some very idiosycratic one-off and use it to make out-of-proportion declarations about the utility of a given technology?

They either have only read propaganda pieces from fossil fuel producers or are trying to create some of those.

I would expect the number of people that honestly don't know anything but propaganda to be way higher than the number of people creating propaganda. But there's probably a selection bias due to HN being a somewhat large site with some influence on SEO and AI training.

Re: The time has finally come for geothermal energy

#82

Post by buu700 »

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…

I agree. I think the correct environmentalist position at that time wouldn't have been to oppose nuclear, but to advocate for improvements, streamlined approvals of improved designs, and public investment or incentives.

I wasn't really commenting on the merits of 20th century environmentalist movements, more raising the general point that fission power has inherent costs which weren't reflected by narrow 1950s analyses of how much energy was extractable from U-235. Operation of a fission plant requires much more capex and opex than it would if we didn't care about cleanliness (waste management), security (fissile material theft prevention), or safety (meltdown prevention).

Fusion power is more complex to invent and practically depends on modern technologies that didn't exist 50 years ago, but once the first demonstration plants are operational, marginal costs to deploy and operate more should be much lower and ultimately become very low at scale.

Re: The time has finally come for geothermal energy

#83

Post by m463 »

danans wrote: post #16
trollbridge wrote: post #13

People across the road from have geothermal, driven by a 1.5m-deep pond right near their house. Their heat never costs more than $100 a month in the winter.

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?

Re: The time has finally come for geothermal energy

#84

Post by jimbokun »

roadside_picnic wrote: post #75
hodgehog11 wrote: post #3

I've always been curious why a cost-effective widespread implementation of geothermal energy has never been considered a holy grail of energy production, at least not in the public debate. Much of the discussion is so focussed on nuclear fusion, which seems so much harder and less likely to be reliable.

> a holy grail of energy production Since you're comparing it to nuclear, I'm assuming you mean electricity production here, not energy production? It's always worth remembering that electricity only accounts for ~20% of global energy consumption (in the US it's closer to 33%). I suspect people confuse these two because in a residential context electricity plays a huge part of our energy usage, but as a whole it's a…

What does "Rejected Energy" mean in that graph?

Great chart, by the way.

Re: The time has finally come for geothermal energy

#85

Post by jmward01 »

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…

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 a rich ecosystem of power generation. Solar and batteries may be amazing but global supply chains can be disrupted. Similarly, having multiple solutions means that niche use cases have more options and a larger likelihood of finding an acceptable solution. So, yes to all of the above. We are big enough to try them all.

Re: The time has finally come for geothermal energy

#87

Post by Animats »

pjc50 wrote: post #10
hodgehog11 wrote: post #3

I've always been curious why a cost-effective widespread implementation of geothermal energy has never been considered a holy grail of energy production, at least not in the public debate. Much of the discussion is so focussed on nuclear fusion, which seems so much harder and less likely to be reliable.

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 surface. "Deep geothermal" gets talked about, because temperatures high enough for steam are available almost everywhere if you can drill 3,000 meters down. There are very few wells in the world that deep, not counting horizontal drilling runs.

The economics are iffy. You drill one of the most expensive wells ever drilled, and you get a medium-pressure steam line. Average output is tens of megawatts.[1]

[1] https://pangea.stanford.edu/ERE/db/GeoConf/papers/SGW/2020/A...

Re: The time has finally come for geothermal energy

#88

Post by hluska »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #74
masterj wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern geothermal is dispatchable. It's a really good compliment to wind and solar https://climateinstitute.ca/safe-bets-wild-cards/advanced-ge...

But is it usefully dispatchable? Nuclear can be made dispatchable but it's not usefully dispatchable because the costs are fairly similar whether the plant is on or off. Like nuclear, I believe geothermal has high capital cost and low running costs, suggesting that it isn't usefully dispatchable. But that's too simplistic. A big limitation of geothermal is that rock has poor thermal conductivity. So once you remove h…

That’s a lot of words to admit that geothermal has its place.

Re: The time has finally come for geothermal energy

#89

Post by jamescrowley »

XorNot wrote: post #79
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…

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 can plug the gaps when cheaper forms of generation cannot.

Re: The time has finally come for geothermal energy

#90

Post by davidw »

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…

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.

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