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The time has finally come for geothermal energy

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160 points riordan | 1 comments | 17 Nov 25 13:55 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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anotherevan ◴[17 Nov 25 22:09 UTC] No.45958933[source]▶
Purely as an aside, I had the pleasure of visiting Iceland in August and it was great. Truly beautiful, rugged land.

Another way they've utilised geothermal energy is with large, sophisticated greenhouses which allow growing of many produce they would otherwise import. I only had the opportunity for a brief visit but a lot of it looked hydroponic with really interesting monitoring and control technology. (Plus the biggest bees this Antipodean has ever seen! These suckers were so big they didn't buzz, they rang the doorbell.)

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frankus ◴[18 Nov 25 01:31 UTC] No.45960400[source]▶
My favorite memory is following a map to a small isolated hot spring off of some random gravel road in the middle of nowhere. It consisted of a hot-tub-sized pool and a shower.

Whoever was there before had left the shower running. We were the only people there, and hadn't seen anyone pass us on the (dead end) road, so it must have been on for quite a while.

Only when I went to for my pre-soak shower did I realize that it didn't actually have any kind of user-accessible way to turn it off.

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1. frankus ◴[19 Nov 25 16:42 UTC] No.45981682[source]▶
Showering in hot water is one of the more energy-intensive things people do on a daily basis. I have a 14.4 kW on-demand heater that just barely keeps up with a 1.5 gallon (~6 liter) per minute shower head with 50°F/10°C incoming water.

On a per-minute basis that's comparable to highway driving in a smallish electric car.