I see this more as a transitional technology. If they manage to convert old coal and gas plants into geothermal ones to expand their lifespan that’s great. But the overall costs of large centralized power-plants are just not competitive anymore, so there is little point in building new ones in general and completely new geothermal plants only make sense where it is cheap to do so due to to the geological situation.
Geothermal makese sense on high latitudes (see Iceland for example) where heat is desirable even if electricity can’t be extracted.
Where you cannot drill deep enough (a Finnish company tried a 5 kilometer borehole and didn’t hit good enough heat) - artificial geothermal (thermal storage in large underground caverns) still makes sense, but not for electricity production. Just storing heat extracted from the environment during summer.
If drilling should get cheaper (e.g. those MIT guys declaring that they have a practical and reliable maser drilling rig), accessing good enough heat may be possible in places where it’s not worthwhile currently.
In some locations, production of geothermal energy can be combined with extracting dissolved chemicals - e.g. some borehole may produce a lot of dissolved lithium salts. No point in letting lithium back underground, better to put it aside.
It is a great technology for heating though.
I hear you but geothermal is the future. It’s an endless resource after all and independent of climate or weather.
Hmm? Solar and wind are at their most cost competitive when deployed in one big field. They’re at their worst when deployed on individual houses.
Cost competitive for whom? For utility companies?
But even so, a field full of solarpannels is still a small decentralized production unit compared to a coal fired powerplant.
The people deploying it. If you don’t want that to be a big utility company, then look into community solar.
No, what I meant is that it is different if you build a system for selling electricity or if you build one for your own consumption. In the latter case other financial and practical considerations apply and rooftop solar can be cost competitive compared to buying electricity from a supplier.
I remember reading a report where geothermal tapping could be linked with incresead sysmic activity. Is this true? And if it is, have advances reduced the problem?
Classic geothermal power plants are located at vulcanically active regions, so there is always a risk involved in it, but the people in these areas are usually already used to small earth-quakes due to the vulcanic activity.
The modern ones are basically the same as fracking, so similar issues arise.
Thank you.
In most cases, it is true, but it might depend on technologies used. If you let water flash into steam underground, that’s going to produce pressure waves and vibration.
