[Plantagenet]

pstarr's body piercings must be getting infected or something, as he seems even more worked up then usual.

[jboogy]

Hey pstarr , why you being such a freakin' jitblob ? Why don't you take your own advice and go outside for awhile ?99% of the threads here are serious and the other 1% are probably thought to be serious by those that start em'. Who the fuck are you to tell us we can't joke around once in a while? You don't like it go read the geopolitics or global economics forum. Or better yet if you don't like the look of a thread title don't click it! We already all have mothers and we're not looking for another one .

[Graeme]

More information about US geothermal potential published by Glitnir can be found here. A pdf file link is in this sentence:

An extensive U.S. Geothermal Energy Market Report has been prepared and published by Glitner to back up their investment decision.

[Lanthanide]

I haven't done this before so I'm just going to quote the entire article, because I have found that sometimes if I try and find an article on the stuff website that's more than 3 months old, it no longer exists.

Mighty River Power will spend $450 million building a geothermal power station at Rotokawa, 10 kilometres north of Taupo.
The state-owned electricity generator and retailer told Parliament's commerce select committee yesterday that the station would generate 132 megawatts of electricity, enough for a city the size of Tauranga.
Company chairwoman Carole Durbin said Nga Awa Purua would be the second biggest geothermal power station in New Zealand.

Mighty River was granted resource consent for the station in December, and procurement contracts are due to be completed this month. The station will be built near the existing, much smaller, 37MW plant and will connect to the 220-kilovolt transmission lines that run directly over the field.
Nga Awa Purua is a joint venture with the Tauhara North No2 Trust, and will take about 2½ years to build.
Mighty River chief executive Doug Heffernan said Nga Awa Purua was first talked about 20 years ago. "It didn't happen at that time because the country had so much cheap Maui gas and it was too expensive to develop the field."

Mighty River will also commission its $300 million 90MW geothermal station at Kawerau this year.
Mr Heffernan said geothermal generation would make up nearly half of all generation by 2015, compared with about 5 per cent two years ago. Hydro generation would make up the other half, down from about 80 per cent two years ago.
Mr Heffernan told the committee that rain at the weekend had filled the hydro lakes enough to provide an extra month of storage, easing the pressure on winter power supply.

Yesterday Environment Minister Trevor Mallard appointed Judge Gordon Whiting to chair a board of inquiry to consider Contact Energy's proposal for a 220MW geothermal power station at Te Mihi near Taupo.
The board will consider submissions on Contact's resource consent application for the $500 million plant, hold a public meeting and make a final decision on the proposal.
The company plans to have the geothermal plant producing electricity by 2011. Contact will lobby for the same fast-track process for a second geothermal plant in the Tauhara steamfield.
The two would cost Contact about $1 billion to develop in the next five years.

Sounds good that they seem to have considerable plans to move us away from hydro/gas towards hydro/geo.

[essex]

Geothermal is a logical choice for NZ which already generates 69% of its electricity from renewables. Mighty River Power is trying to install 60 giant turbines in Palmerston North's water supply and last significant stand of native forest. The locals are very angry at this environmental vandalism. Wind turbines have their place but not at any cost.

[mos6507]

Wind turbines have their place but not at any cost.

Of course not. You wouldn't want Weta to have to digitally erase them when shooting the Hobbit.

[Graeme]

This is one area where I have some expertise. I think this is a good summary and introduction to this important energy source.
Geothermal Energy Sources 101

Geothermal power plants are an almost pollution free source of electricity. Typically they are installed near shallow subsurface sources of steam and/or hot water characterized by faults, seismic activity, earthquakes and volcanoes.

The source of geothermal power generation is steam at a temperature of ~300 degree C. To access geothermal steam involves drilling a vertical well to the source. A second well is drilled to the lower water level of the steam source. The steam is directed into a steam turbine which in turn generates electricity. The condensed turbine exhaust is re-injected back into the underground reservoir.

There are essentially three types of geothermal power plants used depending on the source.
On dry land and free of volcanic activity, the temperature is typically 41 degrees C higher for every 1.6 km below the surface. With a well drilled to a depth of 3 to 10 kms, steam can be successfully produced from water upon contact with subsurface rock. Steam produced in this manner is known as an Enhanced Geothermal System [EGS] and sometimes referred to as a Hot Dry Rock [HDR] system.

A 2006 MIT report suggests that there is enough hard {hot} rock at a 10 km depth in the United States subsurface, to supply the entire world's energy requirements for 30,000 years.
To produce a sustainable source of steam, the HDR system requires sufficient heat at a subsurface depth, a hard rock layer capable of being fractured, an insulating layer above it and a source of water.

seekingalpha

[hugh-wright]

More geothermal stuff: 14.05Mb pdf: Web Page Name

[lostinspace]

Exploring the Mid-Atlantic Ridge for geothermal energy could be the next great frontier.
Mid-Atlantic Ridge , submerged volcanic mountain range that bisects the Atlantic Ocean along its north-south axis. The range covers the middle third of the ocean basin , running for 15,000 km (9,300 mi) through the North and South Atlantic, It is part of the submerged volcanic mountain range that encircles the earth , measuring some 65,000 km (40,000 mi) long.
link

We could tap this heat energy to produce electricity to electrolyze water to produce hydrogen. Even if the process had an efficiency rating of 20%, 20% of an infinite energy supply is still infinite.
At the bottom of the ocean near these volcanic events the seawater temperature is at or above boiling and just feet above this the seawater is near freezing. This creates a huge temperature differential, which could be tapped to produce all the electric power we would ever need.

Here are a few examples of Thermo-Electric Generators developed in the 1800’s. Today we have Thermo-Electric Generators that are far more efficient.
Thermo-Electric Generators: link
I like the idea of conservation and the use of other forms of energy wherever we can will help in the short term but in the long term we need to be thinking in BIG terms.
[edit - topic moved to energy technology forum - markl]

[Armageddon]

So we are all going to be driving $100,000 hydrogen cars ?

[lostinspace]

So we are all going to be driving $100,000 hydrogen cars ?

It is a matter of economy of scale & It is doable, as the numbers increase the price goes down.

[lostinspace]

So we are all going to be driving $100,000 hydrogen cars ?

I envision huge robotic machines as large as the Houston Astrodome hovering above the ocean floor with huge tentacles sucking up the hot ocean water at or near these volcanic systems. The entire system built out of modular components for easy repair. Cameras will be located for all to see with huge floodlights enlightening us all to the wonders of the sea.

Byproducts from the heat we extract will include massive mineral deposits. Pouring out of the vents are thick deposits of minerals rich in copper, iron, manganese, and zinc.
Monitoring stations will be located in downtown office buildings using remote controls to run the system and all the while we can watch the process in TV.

[HEADER_RACK]

Pay attention class
This is what a zombie looks like before being zombiefied
Note the deluisional thinking and far out fantasies
stay far away from them when they start to get the "deer in the headlights" look. Not long after they will start to change and become Dangerous

[americandream]

We've a whole stinky town of geo-thermal vents in New Zealand and are still oil addicts. Doesn't that say something?

[Tyler_JC]

This one seems a little far-fetched...
But geothermal energy is an important part of the energy grid in places like Iceland and could become a major player in other places with geothermal resources.
Hawaii seems like the logical place to build more geothermal plants. Diesel generators supply much of the island chain's power (IIRC) and geothermal resources are enormous thanks to volcanic activity.
If geothermal is anybody's future, it's got to be the Hawaiians.

[JPL]

The crying shame about geothermal is that it does have immense potential. Right beneath us, in many sites around the world we have more high-quality heat energy than we could ever wish for.
The problem is that the technology is about 100 years beyond us (as our new troll buddy pointed out). Drill bits snap & twist, even igneous rock turns into a material more like a liquid than a solid, under the temperatures & pressures involved. And, ahh, then, the sheer joys, even if you do get it right, of pumping liquid water underground & then trying to control the passage of superheated steam deep underground in a place you can never even visit, save on a computer model, still less marry up a turbine inlet to.

[newbonic]

So we are all going to be driving $100,000 hydrogen cars ?

As I pointed out on the hydrogen thread, it is possible to convert a standard car engine to run on hydrogen (you don't need an all new design with a fuel cell).

[hydrocarbon]

Ive heard lots of good things about geothermal energy, supposedly energy almost anywhere if you drill far enough down "six to ten miles down in some areas". The set backs to this unlimited amount of energy source is drilling cost and lack of drilling technology. Right now companies and private citizens are investing heavily in drilling research, for example drilling not with a drill bit but with an extreme source of heat such as a modified gas torch to burn through the rocks or with an electric carbon arc. They also had another problem with thermal quakes but i read they are researching and may have a solution by creating a complex heat exchanger so water and steam wouldn't build up in rocks. I think if fusion doesn't pan out this is the next best thing because we all know about the other alternatives and they do not sound too promising.

[vaseline2008]

Seems like they are already "on it".

Geothermal Power

My only concern is what affects will it have on the Earth's core temperature. Will it ultimately cool down the core? What are the affects of a cooler core?