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The time has finally come for geothermal energy
https://archive.ph/CR2KL https://archive.ph/CR2KL
- toomuchtodo 10mo agohttps://archive.today/CR2KL https://archive.today/CR2KL
- hodgehog11 10mo agoI'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.
- xienze 10mo agoProbably because not everywhere on earth has the same easy access that Iceland has. The article mentions this: > There aren’t gates of Hell just anywhere. A kilometre below ground in Kamchatka is considerably hotter than a kilometre below ground in Kansas. There is also readily accessible geothermal energy in Kenya (where it provides almost fifty per cent of the country’s energy), New Zealand (about twenty per cent), and the Philippines (about fifteen per cent)—all volcanic areas along tectonic rifts. But in less Hadean landscapes the costs and uncertainties of drilling deep in search of sufficient heat have curtailed development.
- kragen 10mo agoIt also explains why this is no longer a problem.
- __turbobrew__ 10mo agoI think it mainly depends on how easy it is to access that energy. I went to Tuscany last year and to my surprise there were geothermal plants everywhere. I have never heard about these plants beforehand, but here they are in Italy quietly powering the countryside and heating greenhouses to grow basil all year around.
- pjc50 10mo agoDrilling 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".
- tastyfreeze 10mo agoPlasma drilling is a recent development that looks promising for unlocking deeper wells for geothermal.
- rini17 10mo agoRemains to be seen, it has serious trouble with water getting into the borehole.
- hodgehog11 10mo agoMany others here have talked about the difficulties of geothermal, which doesn't really get to the heart of my question: why the lack of hype around breaking down those difficulties? I appreciate that you took the time to comment on why it isn't so sexy, the SF argument probably has a lot to do with it.
- buu700 10mo agoTo be fair, that promise of fission made sense from a purely scientific and mathematical perspective, before running into the practical realities of how its externalities interact with real-world politics. Fission is expensive because in practice it turns out we care quite a lot about proper waste management, non-proliferation, and meltdown prevention. In a world where anyone could just YOLO any reactor into production with minimal red tape, consequences be damned, fission energy would actually be extremely cheap. Hence the optimism around fusion. The promise of fusion is an actualization of last century's idealistic conception of fission. It can be a silver bullet for all intents and purposes, at least once it's established with a mature supply chain.
- polotics 10mo agoThere have been numerous trials that had to be stopped because of the triggered earthquakes... Geothermal is not so easy.
- microtherion 10mo agoWas going to mention that point: http://www.seismo.ethz.ch/en/knowledge/geothermal-energy-earthquakes/geothermal-energy-and-induced-earthquakes/ http://www.seismo.ethz.ch/en/knowledge/geothermal-energy-ear... The worst earthquake that was induced that way was 3.5, but given that one of the quakes happened in an area that had a catastrophic earthquake in the Middle Ages, some caution might be warranted: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1356_Basel_earthquake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1356_Basel_earthquake
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- fuoqi 10mo agoBecause unless you sit on top of a volcano, amount of renewable geothermal energy is minuscule. In most places on Earth it's somewhere around 40 mW/m2 (i.e. accounting for conversion losses you need to capture heat from ~500 m2 to renewably power one LED light bulb!). In other words, in most places geothermal plant acts more like a limited battery powered by hot rock, so unless drilling is extremely cheap, it does not make economic sense compared to other energy sources.
- piva00 10mo agoI think OP meant technology for drilling becoming cheaper rather than the near-surface availability of it.
- dns_snek 10mo ago> In most places on Earth it's somewhere around 40 mW/m2 (i.e. accounting for conversion losses you need to capture heat from ~500 m2 to renewably power one LED light bulb!) Ground-source heat pumps extract about 1000 times more power from ground loops, where does the difference come from?
- bluGill 10mo agoA number of sources. Often the air above - ground source relies on the ground being the average temperature of the year round air once you get deep. They also tend to run in heating mode half the year, and cooling mode the other half.
- kragen 10mo agoGround-source heat pumps are irrelevant to geothermal energy sources, and it's unfortunate that the article mentioned them. Ground-source heat pumps are just storing heat from the air during the summer and retrieving it during the winter.
- adrianN 10mo agoIf it can be used to heat houses in winter it’s not irrelevant.
- 6510 10mo agoThere is a crazy amount of energy available everywhere but it is not in the interest of the very powerful very wealthy existing players. This isn't some grand CONSPIRACY. For example oil companies may construct energy investment portfolios that would quite sensibly acquire promising energy related research. They do a simple cost benefit analysis then chose to modestly further research it or shelve it. They turn it into valuable pieces of paper that accumulate value over time. What is there for them not to like about it? I like how David Hamel put it: We live in this thin sliver on the surface of the planet where it is reasonably peaceful. This is the tranquility! It's a good thing! If you go up or down by a mere few miles there is so much energy it kills you.
- nickcw 10mo agoWhy not is explained in David McKay's book Sustainable Energy - without the hot air https://www.withouthotair.com/c16/page_96.shtml https://www.withouthotair.com/c16/page_96.shtml The problems are that rock isn't a good conductor of heat, so once you've cooled a bit down, you have to wait for it to warm up. Warming only happens very slowly at the rate of < 50mW / m² which limits the amount of power you can get out.
- hodgehog11 10mo agoThat's a really good point, and it does take the wind out of the sails. Isn't it possible that eventually we could drill deeper?
- cameldrv 10mo agoCouldn't you frac the rock like they do with oil and gas drilling or have a branching borehole?
- kragen 10mo agoYes, that's what this article is about.
- hackeraccount 10mo agoHarder absolutely but "less likely to be reliable"? If economically viable fusion was "cracked" what would the nature of it's unreliability even be?
- hcknwscommenter 10mo agoall the machinery used to obtain and maintain an economically viable fusion reaction. Having worked with particle accelerators and synchrotron rings, I'll tell you that stuff breaks down all the time.
- pfdietz 10mo agoThe reactor breaking and taking a very long time to repair because the repairs would have to be done remotely, with robots. The structure becomes too activated for people to go inside, even after the reactor is shut off. The reactor breaks because it's a large device operated at high stresses (power/area, neutron loading). There are many components and joints that can fail. BTW, this means fusion will be expensive, because getting all those components to be reliable right off the bat becomes expensive. No tiny cracks in the welds means expensive quality control.
- Iwan-Zotow 10mo agoPower flow is in general very low - ca 50-60 mW/sq.m
- roadside_picnic 10mo ago> a holy grail of energy production Since you're comparing it to nuclear, I'm assuming you mean electricity production here, not energy production? It's always worth remembering that electricity only accounts for ~20% of global energy consumption (in the US it's closer to 33%). I suspect people confuse these two because in a residential context electricity plays a huge part of our energy usage, but as a whole it's a smaller part of total energy usage than most people imagine. But any serious discussion of renewable energy should be careful not to make this very significant error. The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory publishes a great diagram of US energy use: https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/sites/flowcharts/files/2024-12/energy-2023-united-states.png https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/sites/flowcharts/files/2024-12/e...
- jimbokun 10mo agoWhat does "Rejected Energy" mean in that graph? Great chart, by the way.
- philipkglass 10mo agoRejected energy means energy that is lost as waste heat without performing any work first. For example, a coal fired power plant may generate 3 megajoules of thermal energy from coal combustion but only deliver 1 megajoule of it as electricity. The other 2 megajoules are lost as useless waste heat. The 1 megajoule of useful electricity is also ultimately dissipated as low grade heat, but it can do work first (like generating light, or pumping water uphill).
- floatrock 10mo agoOnly about 30% of the energy in gasoline is converted to useful work in a gasoline car (the 'make metal box go forward' part). The remaining 70% is Rejected Energy (the steam you see going out the tail pipe in winter). Which (not sure if you did this intentionally or accidentally) brings up an interesting point on the parent comment and the LLNL sankey: > It's always worth remembering that electricity only accounts for ~20% of global energy consumption (in the US it's closer to 33%). That "global energy consumption" figure includes a lot of Rejected Energy going out tailpipes and smoke stacks turning burnables into electricity. A secret bonus of wind and solar is if you produce electricity without burning things, you actually decrease the energy demand! If you're not losing 70% of your energy consumption to the Rejected category, you suddenly need a lot less total energy.
- jamescrowley 10mo agoUntil recently, the geographical locations where geothermal is feasible and economic was very limited. Ironically it is tech from fracking/shale gas that is starting to open up a far wider range of possible sites at lower cost.
- 1970-01-01 10mo agoIt always has been. Our problem is switching over existing infrastructure without asinine complainers ruining the revolution. We can't even declare total victory with LED bulbs over incandescent. The war to have solar plants over more coal is falling back to coal thanks mostly to AI. Pushback on geothermal will arrive, I guarantee it.
- velcrovan 10mo ago> falling back to coal thanks mostly to AI citation needed
- 1970-01-01 10mo agohttps://fortune.com/2025/08/31/ai-data-center-boom-old-coal-plants/ https://fortune.com/2025/08/31/ai-data-center-boom-old-coal-...
- driggs 10mo agoThere is an enormous push to build and power data centers in the DC / Northern Virginia region, and there's legislation in West Virginia right now requiring all coal-fired power plants to operate at at least 69% capacity at all times to support it. > “West Virginia has numerous coal plants that have powered this country for decades. We need these plants to remain operational,” [WV Governor] Morrisey said. “… We will never turn our backs on our existing coal plants and we will work with the federal government to pursue new coal-fired generation.” https://westvirginiawatch.com/2025/09/11/morrisey-shares-new-energy-plan-for-wv-relying-heavily-on-coal-natural-gas-to-grow-power-creation/ https://westvirginiawatch.com/2025/09/11/morrisey-shares-new... https://wvpublic.org/story/energy-environment/data-center-bill-contains-provisions-to-benefit-coal/ https://wvpublic.org/story/energy-environment/data-center-bi... https://www.wvlegislature.gov/Bill_Status/bills_text.cfm?billdoc=hb2014%20intr.htm&yr=2025&sesstype=RS&i=2014 https://www.wvlegislature.gov/Bill_Status/bills_text.cfm?bil...
- dalyons 10mo agoThe only way new coal plants get built from today on is with massive lifetime subsidies, because they are uncompetitive. Ie, if they get built it’s for dumb politics not economics
- rspoerri 10mo agoat some point we will figure out that because we took some much energy out of earths core that it stops spinning and causes the magnetic field to collapse ;-)
- Retric 10mo agoNot really how that works. Also earths core is being heated from nuclear decay and tidal effects. It’s getting 10’s or TW worth of heat until the sun expands and eats the earth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth's_internal_heat_budget https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth's_internal_heat_budget
- danans 10mo agoI think they meant that as a joke.
- fanatic2pope 10mo agoThanks for that wikipedia link, it's fascinating!
- zdragnar 10mo agoThe world's total energy consumption (most of which is fossil fuels) is currently estimated at 620 exajoules, or 17TWh / year. Assuming zero growth in energy consumption (hello AI), extracting even half of that seems like it would be consequential.
- Retric 10mo ago10 TW * 1 year = 8,760 TWh / year. The current rate of energy production is ~42TW and slowly dropping over billions of years, so even after efficiency losses gathering 1% of what’s produced is several times current energy consumption.
- dbeardsl 10mo agoI believe this is off by 5 or 6 orders of magnitude. Looks like it's more like 200,000Twh / Yr https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-consumption https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-consumption
- trollbridge 10mo agoPeople across the road from have geothermal, driven by a 1.5m-deep pond right near their house. Their heat never costs more than $100 a month in the winter.
- danans 10mo agoThat's a different "geothermal" - the correct name is "ground source heat pump" or in your neighbor's case, a pond-source heat pump. Those exploit the temperature stability that occurs some small numbers or meters subsurface for heating in the winter and cooling in the summer. "Geothermal energy" involves drilling down to hot rock to tap intense heat to run a turbine that produces electricity.
- yawaramin 10mo agoIt's nuclear fission. It's always been nuclear fission (well, at least since the '50s) and it will continue to be until we commercialize fusion reactors. Everything else is nice to have but it's like NIH syndrome.
- toomuchtodo 10mo agoGeothermal is fission, and wind, solar, and batteries are fusion at a distance. In both cases, the failure scenarios are benign vs traditional fission generation. It's fine to keep striving for fusion humans control, but the problem (global electrification and transition to low carbon generation) is already solved with the tech we have today. It took the world 68 years to achieve the first 1TW of solar PV. The next 1TW took 2 years. Globally, ~760GW of solar PV is deployed per year (as of this comment), and will at some point hit ~1TW/year of deployment between now and 2030. Geothermal is a great fit for dispatchable power to replace coal and fossil gas today (where able); batteries are almost cheaper than the cost to ship them, but geothermal would also help solve for seasonal deltas in demand vs supply ("diurnal storage"). https://reneweconomy.com.au/it-took-68-years-for-the-world-to-reach-1-terawatt-of-solar-pv-capacity-it-took-just-two-years-to-double-it/ https://reneweconomy.com.au/it-took-68-years-for-the-world-t... https://ember-energy.org/data/2030-global-renewable-target-tracker/ https://ember-energy.org/data/2030-global-renewable-target-t... I also love geothermal for district heating in latitudes that call for it; flooded legacy mines appear to be a potential solution for that use case. Flooded UK coalmines could provide low-carbon cheap heat 'for generations' - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45860049 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45860049 - November 2025
- yawaramin 10mo agoFailure scenario in modern fission reactors is also benign. Reactors are designed to lock down to prevent any leaks. We deploy solar PV capacity, this doesn't mean we actually get that much power from the deployments. Nuclear fission provides reliable, baseload power, and doesn't require huge battery arrays to compensate for the sun setting or winds calming.
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- flowingfocus 10mo agoInstead of drilling deep, there is also an intersting case for storing cheap solar energy as hat in piles of dirts in the summer to power turbines in the winter: https://austinvernon.site/blog/standardthermal.html https://austinvernon.site/blog/standardthermal.html
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- patall 10mo agoThe Berlin one also had some promising news today: https://www.adlershof.de/en/news/successful-tests-on-underground-heat-storage-in-berlin-adlershof https://www.adlershof.de/en/news/successful-tests-on-undergr... We have to see if and when any of them goes into production, but the technology seems very interesting
- dwa3592 10mo agoThe problem is how do you remove the incumbents. Oil lobby is pretty strong. Imagine what would happen to car lobby once we have teleportation.
- mcswell 10mo agoThere are scifi stories that have that kind of premise. Here's one, about electric power: "Damned if you don't" by Randall Garrett (https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/24064/pg24064-images.html https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/24064/pg24064-images.ht...). I think there was also one about teleportation, although I can't remember where I read it.
- adverbly 10mo agoDrill baby drill! Seriously this would be such a dream! Turns out that the best battery is literally 10 feet away* - and you don't even need to charge it! *if you want to make steam its a few thousand, but for heating and cooling its literally just 10 feet!
- blacksmith_tb 10mo agoWell, heat pumps are awesome, but ground-source is overkill for many places where the air temps don't fall too low (and it's a lot harder to drill holes behind your house).
- bryanlarsen 10mo agoBaseload generation is useless in 2025. It's in the name; it's called "base load", not "base generation". Base generation was a cost optimization. Planners noticed that load never dropped below a specific level, and that cheapest power was from a plant designed to run 100% of the time rather than one designed to turn on and off frequently. So they could reduce cost by building a mix of base and peaker generation plants. In 2025, that's no longer the case. The cheapest power is solar & wind, which produces power intermittently. And the next cheapest power is dispatchable. To take advantage of this cheap intermittent power, we need a way to provide power when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing. Which is provided by storage and/or peaker plants. That's what we need. If added non-dispatchable power to that mix than we're displacing cheap solar/wind with more expensive mix, and still not eliminating the need for further storage/peaker plants. If non-dispatchable power is significantly cheaper than storage and/or peaker power than it's useful in a modern grid. That's not the case in 2025. The next cheapest power is natural gas, and it's dispatchable. If you restrict to clean options, storage & geographical diversity is cheaper than other options. Batteries for short term storage and pumped hydro for long term storage.
- masterj 10mo agoModern geothermal is dispatchable. It's a really good compliment to wind and solar https://climateinstitute.ca/safe-bets-wild-cards/advanced-geothermal/ https://climateinstitute.ca/safe-bets-wild-cards/advanced-ge...
- bryanlarsen 10mo agoBut is it usefully dispatchable? Nuclear can be made dispatchable but it's not usefully dispatchable because the costs are fairly similar whether the plant is on or off. Like nuclear, I believe geothermal has high capital cost and low running costs, suggesting that it isn't usefully dispatchable. But that's too simplistic. A big limitation of geothermal is that rock has poor thermal conductivity. So once you remove heat it takes a while for it to warm up again. If you're running it 100% then you need a large area to compensate. OTOH, if you're running it at a lower duty cycle you likely need less area. So if you know the duty cycle in advance, then you can likely significantly reduce costs. Yay! But that also means that you likely can't run a plant built for low duty cycles continuously for 2 weeks during a dankelflaute. It's likely great for smoothing out daily cycles, but not as good for smoothing out annual cycles. That means it's competing against batteries, which are also great for smoothing out daily cycles, and are very inexpensive.
- rconti 10mo agoIceland's hot water was a culture shock to me in 2 ways: 1. The host at our apartment encouraged us to leave the windows cracked and the heat on for good air circulation. 2. The hot water (at the taps) has a sulfer smell, because it's (also) piped geothermal water. My host explained they also had a water heater upstairs in their home because they preferred "heated cold water" over "hot water", which is a funny distinction to those of us who do not have the latter.
- euroderf 10mo agoWhen heating is dirt (heh) cheap, it doesn't cost much to do things like put big hot tubs and heated pools outdoors, like they do in Reykjaviks swim halls. It's really nice.
- colechristensen 10mo agoOne of the benefits of over-provisioning solar is that fun "wasteful" things that use a lot of energy become practical and non-harmful.
- MrDresden 10mo agoNote though that the sulfur smell from hot water in Iceland is only a thing in certain areas in Reykjavik, and perhaps some locations around the island. This is due to the hot water in those regions literally being pumped out of the ground and into homes, and on a completely separate plumbing system. Majority of other areas use heat exchangers with pristine cold water, thus no smell nor taste is transferred. So if you are staying in any other municipality in the capitol, you can use the hot water in cooking directly without boiling cold water. It's the same.
- davidw 10mo agoThat Newberry Crater one is really close to where I live and... it'd be so amazing if it came to fruition. It sounds almost 'too good to be true'.
- garbageoverflow 10mo agoI was wondering how feasible it would be to reuse abandoned oil pumps for geothermal energy. A closed loop system [1] would probably be the most appropriate, with energy generation by spinning of a turbine by steam that gets recycled. I don't have the expertise and was wondering if someone can share a bit of knowledge with the rest of us. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-loop_geothermal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-loop_geothermal
- MathMonkeyMan 10mo agoI don't have knowledge, but my understanding based on a conversation I had on the topic with a friend of mine is that the "let's use hydraulic fracturing to make geothermal energy feasible in North America" idea involves drilling very far down. Oil is on [average][1] about a mile down, while [one of Fervo's wells][2] is three times deeper. [1]: https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/ng_enr_welldep_s1_a.htm https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/ng_enr_welldep_s1_a.htm [2]: https://fervoenergy.com/fervo-energy-pushes-envelope/ https://fervoenergy.com/fervo-energy-pushes-envelope/
- anotherevan 10mo agoPurely 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.)
- frankus 10mo agoMy 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.
- frankus 10mo agoShowering 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.
- boringg 10mo agoSorry the time had not come for geothermal. It will always be an expensive niche market. Will there be more? Sure but its ever going to fly globally.
- mns 10mo agoIt probably also depends on where you are and how deep you need to drill. It seems to be working out for Munich in Germany, there are a couple of city districts (including mine) that are heated by geothermal, and they invested in this since the early 2000s. Can't really find an english page for the whole project though: https://www.swm.de/unternehmen/geothermie https://www.swm.de/unternehmen/geothermie
- kragen 10mo agoI hadn't realized that the IDDP had hit magma! That's very exciting! Obviously I'm very out of date, since that was in 02008. However, I'm skeptical that geothermal energy can be economically competitive with solar without major innovations in heat engines, no matter how abundant the energy is and how easily you can get that energy to the surface. https://www.eia.gov/analysis/studies/powerplants/capitalcost/pdf/capital_cost_AEO2020.pdf#page=45 https://www.eia.gov/analysis/studies/powerplants/capitalcost... outlines the estimated costs (five years ago) of a 650MW peak ultra-supercritical coal power plant without carbon capture; the total capital cost estimate comes out to US$2.4 billion, which is US$3.70 per peak watt. Of that, I think the only line item that wouldn't be the same in a 650MW peak ultra-supercritical geothermal plant is "Mechanical – Boiler Plant", which is US$905 million, leaving US$1.5 billion, US$2.30 per peak watt. (I'm not even sure you could eliminate even all of that US$905 million in a geothermal plant; some of it might be plumbing you'd also need to pass heat from your downhole heat exchange fluid with the ultra-pure deionized water you use to drive the delicate steam turbine. But let's suppose you could.) Of that US$1.5 billion, US$155.2 million is "Mechanical – Turbine Plant", so the turbine alone costs 24¢/Wp. But SEIA last year published https://www.seia.org/research-resources/solar-market-insight-report-q2-2024 https://www.seia.org/research-resources/solar-market-insight.... They have a set of cost breakdowns for “turnkey installed price” for power plants, coming in at 98¢ per watt for “utility-scale fixed-tilt”, slightly higher than the previous year and almost half due to about 40¢ for the PV module itself. Residential is at 325¢, with about 20¢ for the PV module. That's even in the US, where the EIA report's estimates were sited, despite the US's prohibitive import tariffs on solar panels from China, which makes most of the world's solar panels. Mainstream PV modules are now 12.3¢ per peak watt https://www.solarserver.de/photovoltaik-preis-pv-modul-preisindex/ https://www.solarserver.de/photovoltaik-preis-pv-modul-preis... (except in the US), which would drop SEIA's cost estimates from 98¢/Wp to 70¢/Wp, even in the absence of any other cost optimizations in solar farm design. Now, utility-scale fixed-tilt solar farms typically have a capacity factor of around 20%, depending on latitude, because the sun is below the horizon half the time and somewhat slanted and/or clouded most of the rest of the time, so 70¢/Wp is really about US$3.50 per watt, not counting the batteries. But geothermal typically only has a capacity factor of around 74% in the US https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacity_factor#Capacity_factors_by_energy_source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacity_factor#Capacity_facto... so US$2.30/Wp is really US$3.10 per watt. That leaves you 30¢/Wp (74% × ($3.50 - $3.10)) for geothermal exploration and drilling. And if you can reduce the 82% of the solar 70¢/Wp represented by the non-PV-module costs by a little bit, or if you're equatorial enough that your PV capacity factor is 23% or above, that's going to zero or negative. I think the average PV capacity factor in California is something like 29%, though that isn't fixed-tilt and therefore has slightly higher costs. Also note that the PVXchange page I linked above lists "low-cost" solar panels as having fallen to €0.050/Wp this month, a new historic low, which is 5.9¢/Wp. That's a 50% price decline from two years ago. Fundamentally I think it's just going to be very hard for 24¢/Wp steam engines to compete against 5.9¢/Wp solar panels. The steam engines have the additional disadvantage that, to get the price even that low, you need enormous degrees of centralization—on the order of a few thousand power plants for the whole population of the US. This requires long-distance electrical transmission lines as well as local distribution lines, which are both substantial costs of their own as well as wasting a double-digit percentage of the energy. Local electrical generation eliminates those costs; you can charge your cellphone or your angle-grinder battery directly from a 5.9¢/Wp solar panel with no more electronics than a couple of protection diodes, not requiring the rest of the 70¢/Wp in the utility-scale solar plant. This cost analysis is completely indifferent to where the heat to boil the water comes from, so it applies equally well to nuclear power, except for Helion. The exceptions would be in places where geothermal energy is available and solar energy is either unavailable or very marginal: the surface of Venus, the ocean floor, Antarctica, Svalbard, etc. Does anyone have a trustworthy estimate of the costs of drilling? Even drilling into cold rocks (for oil) would be a good start, even if hot rocks are more expensive to drill into. The article says that Fervo has raised US$800 million in capital and drilled three appraisal and demonstration wells with it so far, which gives us a ballpark of US$200 million per well. This does not offer much hope that drilling costs will be a minor fraction of the costs of a geothermal plant. The article unfortunately doesn't enter into this analysis at all. I am somewhat skeptical of this figure: > Geothermal energy production in the U.S. at that time [i.e., 02005] was around three or four thousand megawatts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_of_the_United_States#Renewable_energy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_of_the_Unit... says that geothermal energy production in the US in 02022 was 16.09 billion kWh per year, which is 1825 megawatts. Does that mean that geothermal energy production fell by about half between 02005 and 02022? More likely Rivka Galchen got confused. It's unfortunate that the article also confuses ground-source heat pumps (thermal energy storage) with geothermal energy sources. It's a common confusion, and it makes conversations about geothermal energy unnecessarily difficult.
- Vera_Wilde 10mo agoOne underappreciated challenge in geothermal is simply the distribution of usable rock formations — low-prevalence resources. Better drilling reduces the rarity penalty by making more sites viable. Similar structure to many screening problems: improve detection and you can shift what counts as "reachable."
- phreeza 10mo agoTo me the most important fact to keep in mind about geothermal is that the energy flow across the crust is ~0.1W/m^2. Compare that to the sun which has >100W/m^2 even at high latitudes. Of course this does not mean geothermal is useless (in particular heat pumps, if you count those, are great), but it goes a long way to explaining why geothermal isn't seeing the same explosion as solar.
- camgunz 10mo agoMaybe this is a stupid question, but is there any downside to harvesting heat from the planet? Would we slow convections by cooling it and then cause some weird ass problem?
- jeremyken708 10mo ago[dead]
- jeremyken708 10mo ago[dead]