The Einstein of energy efficiency.

Investment Analysis Clubs Macro Economic Trends and Risks
21

Geothermal has starggering possibilities, but remains problematic over unsolved technical problems mostly arouond the extreme difficulty of coping with the dissolved and often corrosive junk that accompanies H2O up from the depths.

Once solved (and I am confident of that over the long term but short term it still baffles), the “Great Basin” region extending from east California through Washington east into wester Colorado up to Idaho and down to New Mexico is the equivalent of a Saudi Arabia or so. And geothermal ain’t bothered by nighttime nor cloudy weather…

david fb

6 Likes
22

flyerboys writes,

Geothermal has starggering possibilities, but remains problematic over unsolved technical problems mostly arouond the extreme difficulty of coping with the dissolved and often corrosive junk that accompanies H2O up from the depths.

You don’t have to go deep enough to stir up all that corrosive stuff. They only have to drill to 300-500ft depth for some of these small commercial closed-loop systems. And they are suitable for an even larger area of the US. I took this continuing education course a few months ago to maintain my Civil Engineering PE license.

Geothermal Boreholes
https://s3.amazonaws.com/suncam/docs/091.pdf

intercst

2 Likes
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Before you rush out and put in some bore holes

prices for a water well - six inches - in the DFW area

"How much does a 300 foot water well cost?

Well Drilling Cost
Depth In Feet 4” Diameter PVC Casing 6” Diameter Steel Casing
200 $7,100 $12,240
250 $8,875 $15,300
300 $10,650 $18,360"

If you need two of them…welll…double that.

Most homes around here don’t have enough land for a closed loop buried six or eight feet underground, either.

Maybe a small business could justify that if being built from scratch for extra ‘green credits’ for the final design. Solar panels all over the roof. Super insulated. LED lighting.

Heck, when I moved to TX in 1990, the large new building I worked in was a new ‘showcase’. It had a sub-basement with a GIANT block of artificial chemical ice. Like 100x200 feet x 8 feet. During the night , electric chillers (operated with super low rate electricity probably from the nuke plants 50 miles away) would freeze the ice. During the day, the pipes within would run the a/c units providing much/all of the ‘chill’ to run them. Seemed to work out OK but they never published any results of that situation, but likely my company locked them in to long term contract for electricity and contingencies.

Never heard of anyone else doing it.

However, when I was in VA in 1975, and built my new house, the local electric company was pushing a ‘new furnace’. It was a heat storage unit - which would super heat ceramic bricks in an oven type deal overnight, and you’d use the heat during the day to heat the house. You’d get ‘night rate’ electricity to do it at 1/2 the price of normal electric. (I was out in the country side with no NG near). The furnace came from some Scandinavian country. It would normally be connected to a hot water baseboard heat system.

I decided not to do it since it didn’t interface well with air conditioning. You’d need the air ducts for a/c. So I opted for heat pump to do both.

Maybe they could have sold that idea up north…where there is little need for a/c.

My parents built a house on Lake George in 1977. Oil fired baseboard heat. No a/c. 20 years later, my mom, suffering from bad arthritis, put in a/c. Used it maybe two weeks or three a summer. Did help to get the humidity out of the house other times. (underground oil tank went bad - now they run on propane for the heat system - and backup generator).

There are a few ground loop geothermal systems here in TX, but not a whole lot of residential ones. Maybe business developments.

Now folks are pushing ‘heat pump’ hot water systems.

t

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Never heard of anyone else doing it.

As gas and electic prices rise, the capital investment required to pursue “free” energy from the Earth gets a shorter payback time.

intercst

25

Geothermal has starggering possibilities, but remains problematic over unsolved technical problems mostly arouond the extreme difficulty of coping with the dissolved and often corrosive junk that accompanies H2O up from the depths.

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Some of the junk contains Lithium and Rare Earths. This will make them profitable.

But all geothermal does not needs to go the areas where this junk is brought up. Deep holes can be bored and fracked to provide a basin for injecting clean water that comes back as superheated steam.

Jaak

2 Likes
26

Geothermal has starggering possibilities, but remains problematic over unsolved technical problems mostly arouond the extreme difficulty of coping with the dissolved and often corrosive junk that accompanies H2O up from the depths.

fb,

That is why New England on the western side of the Connecticut river is good for this. Deep bedrock where often drilling wont allow water to be contaminated. Yes the drilling would need to go deep. That is now possible.

1 Like
27

Geothermal Powerhouse Iceland Hit by Lack of Electricity
www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-10/geothermal-powerh…
Isolated from any other country’s power networks, Iceland has this winter faced a new predicament: running out of electricity. Sitting in the Atlantic Ocean, 850 kilometers (530 miles) from the Scottish coast, the country had to be self-sufficient in electricity generation, and power was always so plentiful that a large aluminum-smelting industry emerged half a century ago to churn wealth for Icelanders, who until then had relied on fishing for their livelihoods…

But this winter, rising demand from an electrifying society and power-hungry industries combined with low reservoir levels after summer droughts meant the country spent four months curtailing power to certain industries, including fish-meal factories and district heating plants in some remote areas…

The need to increase generation capacity “is quite urgent,” Hordur Arnarson, chief executive officer of national power company Landsvirkjun HF, said in an interview. Still, there’s no quick respite in sight, as it will take at least four years to bring new generation capacity – up to 300 megawatts – online, he said…fish-meal factories in the east of the country have been running on oil, because there was no electricity to power them, and heat for some homes had to be generated with crude over the winter.

DB2

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The need to increase generation capacity “is quite urgent,” Hordur Arnarson, chief executive officer of national power company Landsvirkjun HF, said in an interview. Still, there’s no quick respite in sight, as it will take at least four years to bring new generation capacity – up to 300 megawatts – online, he said…fish-meal factories in the east of the country have been running on oil, because there was no electricity to power them, and heat for some homes had to be generated with crude over the winter.

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I thought they were a little smarter than sit on their hands. They could get more than 300 megawatts with 30 wind turbines (or 600 megawatts with 60 wind turbines) in less than 4 years.

Jaak