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The time has finally come for geothermal energy

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160 points riordan | 2 comments | 17 Nov 25 13:55 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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hodgehog11 ◴[17 Nov 25 15:21 UTC] No.45954362[source]▶
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.
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pjc50 ◴[17 Nov 25 15:35 UTC] No.45954493[source]▶
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 cheap to meter".

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1. Animats ◴[17 Nov 25 20:25 UTC] No.45957872[source]▶
> 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...

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2. hluska ◴[17 Nov 25 20:52 UTC] No.45958136[source]▶
The economics change when you’re in oil country. My beautiful little province has oil wells drilled between 250 and 2900 metres. Due to corporate ‘issues’ many of these wells are orphaned and remediation becomes a provincial problem. With deep holes and provincially owned electricity and gas companies, geothermal makes more economic sense; it’s robbing a benefit from a big cost centre.

I went to high school with two guys who are working on geothermal as a means to remediate orphan wells. I’m biased in their favour, but the numbers make a lot of sense.