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United States Earth Power

Could Geothermal Power Revolutionize US Energy Consumption? (msn.com) 78

Posted by EditorDavid from the down-to-earth dept.
That massive geothermal energy project in Utah gets a closer look from the Washington Post, which calls it "a significant advance for a climate-friendly technology that is gaining momentum in the United States." Once fully operational, the project could generate up to 2 gigawatts of electricity — enough to power more than 2 million homes. In addition, the BLM proposed Thursday to speed up the permitting process for geothermal projects on public lands across the country. Earlier this month, the agency also hosted the biggest lease sale for geothermal developers in more than 15 years...

White House national climate adviser Ali Zaidi said in an interview Thursday, "Enhanced geothermal technology has the opportunity to deliver something in the range of 65 million homes' worth of clean power — power that can be generated without putting any pollution in the sky. So we see it as a really meaningful contributor to our technology tool kit...."

The developments Thursday come as tech companies race to find new sources of zero-emission power for data centers that can use as much energy as entire cities. With major backing from Google parent Alphabet, Fervo recently got its first project up and running in the northern Nevada desert... The advanced geothermal technology that Fervo is trying to scale up is an attractive option for tech firms. Enhanced geothermal plants do not pose all the safety concerns that come with nuclear power, but they have the potential to provide the round-the-clock energy that data centers need. The challenge Fervo faces is whether it can bring this technology online quickly enough.
Fervo (a seven-year-old start-up) was co-founded by Tim Latimer, who previously worked as a drilling engineer, according to the article. But "Early in my career I got passionate about climate change. I started looking at where could a drilling engineer from the oil and gas industry make a difference," Latimer said during a Washington Post Live event in September. "And I realized that geothermal had been so overlooked ... even though the primary technical challenge to making geothermal work is dropping drilling costs."

Could Geothermal Power Revolutionize US Energy Consumption? More | Reply

Could Geothermal Power Revolutionize US Energy Consumption?

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  • Good thing of course (Score:3)

    by Valgrus Thunderaxe ( 8769977 ) on Sunday October 20, 2024 @12:38PM (#64879303)
    But I remain skeptical until it's on-line and producing power. All these projects always seem to come in 10 years late and at tiwce-to-three times their initial proposed cost, if they ever see the light of day, at all.

    • Re:Good thing of course (Score:4, Informative)

      by Mspangler ( 770054 ) on Sunday October 20, 2024 @01:58PM (#64879479)

      https://www.gem.wiki/Terra-Gen... [gem.wiki]

      https://www.gem.wiki/Beowawe_g... [gem.wiki]

      That's the good news, the bad news is the environmentalists don't like geothermal power either, when you actually go to build it.

      https://www.rgj.com/story/news... [rgj.com]

      • " environmentalists don't like geothermal power either"

        Environmentalists don't like anything that advantages the USA. It has long been suspected that they are mostly led by US adversaries, with hordes of "useful idiots" found on places like Tic Toc ready to go protest this or protest that at their beck and call.

        I can't think of a more deserving group to ignore than "environmentalists" that are out to stop something.

        • It has long been suspected that they are mostly led by US adversaries, with hordes of "useful idiots"

          It's been proven the Green movements of the 1960s/70s in Europe were secretly financially supported by the Soviet Union and heavily infiltrated. The German Green Party admits that East German Stasi agents working for the Russians were internal influencers.

          Germany's anti-nuke attitude is in part of remnant of this activity.

          • It has long been suspected that they are mostly led by US adversaries, with hordes of "useful idiots"

            It's been proven the Green movements of the 1960s/70s in Europe were secretly financially supported by the Soviet Union and heavily infiltrated. The German Green Party admits that East German Stasi agents working for the Russians were internal influencers.

            Germany's anti-nuke attitude is in part of remnant of this activity.

            US intel agencies used to call them "watermelons": green on the outside, red inside.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by XXongo ( 3986865 )

        https://www.gem.wiki/Terra-Gen... [gem.wiki]
        https://www.gem.wiki/Beowawe_g... [gem.wiki]

        Cool.

        Do note that those are between 4, 6, 17, and 65 MW, while the ones discussed in the summary are 2GW, nearly two orders of magnitude larger.

      • That's the good news, the bad news is the environmentalists don't like geothermal power either, when you actually go to build it.

        People need to realize that there is no such thing as "clean" power. There's no such thing as a consequence-free method of getting the juice for our stuff. Everything we do... gasoline, nuke, coal, solar, wind, geothermal.... has some side effect that someone will object to. Every method is "dirty" is some way, either in the use of the energy source, or in the methods of acquiring needed materials to operate it.

    • But I remain skeptical until it's on-line and producing power.

      It's already real enough. Pump water into a fracking site and it comes out hot. There are companies working to repurpose decommissioned fracking sites for geothermal power generation. Hopefully they will do something other than mine bitcoins.

  • Geothermal energy, has downsides. In open systems, it generally produces significant excess heat that gets pumped into the surrounding environment, i.e. hot water dumped into streams and rivers, then unsurprisingly, algae blooms, and native species die out. Closed systems don't have the same problem, but since they are more expensive, are not always/often used.

    Their is a cost to the environment.

    You can't dump an infinite amount of heat energy into the environment without consquences.

    • You're not technically wrong here, but can you provide any actual examples of this happening? Usually operators are bound by environmental regs and are on top of that kinda of thing. Usually.

      > You can't dump an infinite amount of heat energy into the environment without consquences.

      Well nobody's proposing an infinite amount of anything so we're good there at least.
      =Smidge=

      • Re:don't get too excited (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Big Hairy Gorilla ( 9839972 ) on Sunday October 20, 2024 @02:38PM (#64879537)
        I'm a bit lazy to do so. However, I'll explain. I did some market research for a US geothermal company sitting on 5 patents for a closed system, around 15 year ago now.
        My personal takeaways were thus. Open systems always lose efficiency over a number of years.. bascially the pressure inside the open system drops and the electricity outputs therefore also drop over a period of time. So the "answer" was to create closed systems, ie. put stuff in tubes, then circulate the stuff, almost exactly like a heat pump or refrigerator. Seems like a pretty good idea. Getting thru the municipal regulations , environmental reviews (how it affects migration routes or native wildlife species), cultural reviews to make sure it's not on a native burial ground or similar, meeting the local regulations and reviews was non trivial, and costly.

        However, even in the closed loop systems, the excess heat was a chronic problem not anticipated in the design, but quite obvious once the demo sites were running. So then the company actually pivoted towards industries that needed that (excess) heat. For instance now you might sell and pump that heat into greenhouses or use it to dry out "brownfields" (areas of land contaminated with various chemicals from defunct factories).. So that may cause a new problem too. So the idea was to heat the brownfields, and then the volatile organic compounds in the soil evaporate..which is the whole idea, however, if you think about it, you really are just adding to amospheric pollution by taking those chemicals out of the ground. You solve one problem by creating another, which you quickly sweep under the rug.

        There also, of course, is the problem of where to build a geothermal plant, because you need to find areas of the earth's crust where heat is close to the surface. Drilling is one of the main construction costs.

        So there are many constraints to geothermal energy production that don't immediately meet the eye. I think there could be viable applications and areas where it's quite applicable, but for certain pumping excess heat into the environment will definitely cause new problems. There's always some jackass who will show up and say that the ocean can absorb ANY amount of heat. Everything has limits, even if they are quite distant.

        In favour of geothermal vs nuclear was the cost. The projected budget to construct a geothermal plant with a closed loop system was by comparison quite affordable vs nuclear... I don't recall the details, but the construction cost for geo were approx 250Million per plant vs 35Billion per plant for nuclear. Obviously, you must compare energy output, but if you could build 150 geoplants for every 1 nuclear plant... it offers a lot of flexibility.

        I wouldn't rule geo energy out at all, but the devil is in the details and it's not a full replacement for anything as much as another tool in the mix.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Entrope ( 68843 )

        Well nobody's proposing an infinite amount of anything so we're good there at least.

        That's not quite true. Either there's an infinite amount of human stupidity, or we can harness energy from Albert Einstein spinning in his grave.

    • Chatham and other small towns used to sell excess heat from their power-plants for heating.
      Much of the downtown had hot-water heat from the power plant of the Chatham, Wallaceburg & Lake Erie Electric Railway.

    • >> Closed systems don't have the same problem

      You didn't bother to read the links? This system reportedly is closed loop (also known as enhanced geothermal), so you can relax.

      But it will take at least another 4 years to build it so I don't know why this article is interesting.

      • I don't know about you, but I find the fact that they're building it and even have all the permits needed is interesting.

        • From the linked article;
          "The BLM on Thursday proposed to exempt many geothermal projects from lengthy environmental analyses under the National Environmental Policy Act — part of a broader, controversial push to accelerate the permitting process for energy projects nationwide."

    • You’re not wrong, of course, but problems with waste heat are hardly limited to geothermal power - any power plant using heat transfer has similar issues to a greater or lesser degree, including coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear. Even solar power systems that rely on solar energy to heat up a furnace will have to get rid of the heat somehow.

      Geothermal also has the potential for producing waste water contaminated with sulphur, metals, or other pollutants that get brought up with the heat transfer

    • "You can't dump an infinite amount of heat energy into the environment without consquences."

      You can't? The sun does it every day...

    • Closed systems are exactly what some are investigating right now, using decommissioned fracking sites. Horizontally drill to connect two sites, pump water between, steam drives turbines, cooling produces water, repeat.

  • Seven-year-old startup? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by VaccinesCauseAdults ( 7114361 ) on Sunday October 20, 2024 @12:48PM (#64879329)
    How many years before a startup become no longer a startup? Is Microsoft a 49-year-old startup? Is Shell a 117-year-old startup? Is Kongo Gumi a 1400-year-old startup?
    • I'm sure you know of a few 20-somethings whom people still refer to as "kid" or "boy." It's less about their age than the fact that they've never accomplished anything.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AvitarX ( 172628 )

      I feel like until it makes money.

      It's a start up as long as people are willing to fund it on the promise of one day being profitable.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by erice ( 13380 )

      How many years before a startup become no longer a startup?
      Is Microsoft a 49-year-old startup? Is Shell a 117-year-old startup?
      Is Kongo Gumi a 1400-year-old startup?

      Being a startup is not defined by age. I have encountered ten year old startups. Most investors are not that patient. They require an exit within a reasonable time usually an IPO or by being acquired by a larger company. It gets murky when companies get big without going public. SpaceX is 22 years old and valued near $200B but is still private. Is it still a startup?

      • I have encountered ten year old startups.

        I think that stretches the defintion of startup too far. A 10 year old company isn't a startup, it is at best a 10 year old, unprofitable company living off investor cash. That's how I'd bill the one I worked for...

        SpaceX is 22 years old and valued near $200B but is still private. Is it still a startup?

        No.

    • How many years before a startup become no longer a startup?

      It's not a time based title.
      https://www.investopedia.com/t... [investopedia.com]

      • * A startup is a company that's in the initial stages of business.
      • * Founders normally finance their startups and may attempt to attract outside investment before they get off the ground.
      • * Funding sources include family and friends, angel investors, venture capitalists, crowdfunding, and loans.
      • * Startups come with a high risk of failure, but they can also be unique places to work with good benefits, a focus on innovation, and great opportunities t
    • I would say startup is a fair word to use until the company has a product in the market or folds.

  • 2 gigawatts of electricity â" enough to power more than 2 million homes

    That's 1kW per home. That might be a valid number if people haven't converted from gas heating/hot water/clothes drying/cooking.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by lsllll ( 830002 )

      Yeah, that seems low, but they're probably thinking mostly apartments/small homes. Still, 1kWh average is a lot. If your electricity+delivery cost was 12 cents per kWh, your bill would have to be upward of $88+fees (most likely around $200) if you used an average of 1kW/hour. But most people who live in apartments' cost is less than $200

      Now that I've put my usage in numbers, I'm really wondering what I'm doing that's using 3.5kWh/hour. I guess it's time to get back to my panel sensor project ...

      • I'm doing that's using 3.5kWh/hour.

        Save yourself some typing, just say kW rather than kWh/hour.

        It is also 1 kW average, not kWh in this case. Power vs energy.

        1 kW * 30 days * 24 hours = 720 kWh/month, $86.40@$0.12/kWh.
        I know in my area SFDs average closer to 1k kWh/month.

    • The average electricity consumption of US households is 10.2 MWh in a year (data for 2023 https://shrinkthatfootprint.co... [shrinkthatfootprint.com] ). A continuous production of 2 GW makes 17.5 TWh in a year, which covers the spending of 1.7 million of such average households.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jbengt ( 874751 )

      That's 1kW per home. That might be a valid number . . .

      That's the typical number used in these sorts of press releases. IIRC, the actual number in the US is about 1.1 to 1.3 kW, which is not any peak, but an average from total kWh for a full year divided by 8766 hours.

    • https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs... [eia.gov]

      n 2022, the average annual amount of electricity sold to (purchased by) a U.S. residential electric-utility customer was 10,791 kilowatthours (kWh), an average of about 899 kWh per month.

      That works out to 30 kwh/day, so 1.25kw average rate. Someone probably just liked a nice round 1kw number to use.

  • If so, I don't recall why the idea never took off?

    • Cost.

      Coal and gas were so cheap that the cost of drilling for, building, and operating a geothermal plant rarely mad much sense. That said, the US has for decades had several times the installed and operating geothermal power than that of Iceland, so it's definitely nothing new either.

      But I guess someone's trying to bring sexy back...
      =Smidge=

      • Reasonable.
        I can see a potential drawback to this, though: what if the heat source they tap into dies out over time, especially if it does so prematurely? Much investment in a power plant that then would have to be shuttered.

        • > I can see a potential drawback to this, though: what if the heat source they tap into dies out over time, especially if it does so prematurely?

          If the Earth's mantel cools to the point that we can't extract usable energy from it anymore, I propose there would be FAR bigger concerns than keeping the power plant open for business.

          =Smidge=

  • In my opinion geothermal is more viable then nuclear
  • We're sort of on a clock here. The soil is now fully CO2 saturated, so the tipping point has come and past.

  • Nothing wrong with full employment, but the cost of geothermal is not competitive with wind or solar. I guess the same could be said for nuclear power and the need to keep those workers employed.

    "That illustrates another reason why geothermal could help the U.S. chart a path to a cleaner energy future, said CEO Tim Latimer. A lot of fossil fuel operations will be phased out to fight climate change. And a lot of oil and gas workers will need a landing spot"

    • Geothermal electricity is fairly constant & not affected by time of day or weather. It can provide valuable consistency to the grid.

    • A few years ago, solar and wind were not cost competitive with geothermal. Things change. If they can get the cost down to within 2 or 3 times that of solar or wind, and show that it can be done with a wide geographical distribution, then it will have a place.

  • Iceland is the place to watch (Score:3, Interesting)

    by okvol ( 549849 ) on Sunday October 20, 2024 @02:49PM (#64879547)
    They are purposely drilling into magma to build a geothermal plant. They accidentally hit magma before and didn't mean to. Now they are doing it on purpose and they think they are prepared. The plant is expected to generate superheated steam that should power a massive generation system.

    • In fact, the massive potential of geothermal power in Iceland is why I've personally suggested that Iceland should be the location of Artificial Intelligence server farms. And the server farms in Iceland can be connected back to North America and Europe using multiple high-capacity fiber optic undersea cables.

  • ...so as the USA finally starts ramping up sustainable electricity production, companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, & Facebook are poising themselves to increase their consumption to match. So what about zero emissions targets? Shouldn't there be some way to prioritise replacing dirty electricity generation first & then see how more can be provided for the big corporations' vanity AI projects & blockchain mining?
    • The US only cares about private profits, so as far as they are concerned without the vanity projects there's no need to solve the dirty energy problem.

  • Yellowstone sit atop of a supervolcano. Would that not make a great location to tap into geothermal power? Im not saying do it smack dab in the middle of the park but surely there are some places they could section off to produce power.

  • Repower coal plants with geothermal already!! (Score:3)

    by Felix Baum ( 6314928 ) on Monday October 21, 2024 @01:10AM (#64880303)
    These dudes from MIT think this is a really really good idea https://news.mit.edu/2022/quai... [mit.edu]

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