While Jim Hansen lobbies states to get newly designed clean burning coal fired generation plants not built, California remains lukewarm still on an opportunity to extract geothermal heat for a variety of locations in California. Nevada on the other hand, is moving forward fast, expecting to quadruple their energy output from geothermal.
Last year while I was surveying Lovelock, NV USHCN station, I happened upon a geothermal plant along Interstate-80. You can see it here on Google Earth. While it doesn’t look like much from the air, you can see the main building and the array of pipes to the wells. i’d been meaning to blog about it, and today was the day.
There is quite a bit of area in the USA that can be exploited for geothermal energy. Most of it in the west.
Click for a larger image
Low and moderate temperature geothermal resources are widely distributed throughout the western and central U.S. and can be seen in Figure 1. There are also a few low-temperature geothermal resources that occur in the east.
There has been several major efforts in assessing the potential for low-temperature geothermal resources in the U.S. The first major effort in the 1980’s included 17 states which resulted in geothermal resource maps, prepared by the National Geophysical Data Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), that are still being used today. The latest effort, which included 10 of the 17 original states, was in the early 1990’s, and which resulted mainly in individual digital databases of all known geothermal wells and springs for a total of over 9,000 wells and springs. The 10 states were: Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, and Washington (Lienau and Ross, 1996).
The low-temperature resource assessment completed in 1990’s included another task. The task was to complete a statewide study of collocated geothermal resources with the only criteria being a collocated community with a resource temperature above 50° C (122°F) and located within 8 km (5 miles) of a community (many of which have <1,000 population). There were 1,723 wells and springs identified with a temperature over 50° C (122°F) with 1,469 of them located within 8 km (5 miles) of a community. There were a total of 271 communities identified within the 10 western states.
The oldest, most versatile and most common use of geothermal energy is direct-use applications; although, most people associate geothermal with power generation. Directuse applications include: greenhouse heating, aquaculture pond and raceway heating, space and district heating, industrial applications such as food processing, and resorts and spas. The fastest growing direct-use applications are for greenhouses and aquaculture, which can be seen in Figure 2.
The reports of the original survey teams and the new information from the additional six states documents a total of 11,775 wells and springs in the databases with the new states producing 2,731 more entries. The number of collocated sites increased to 404 from the previous 271 for the 10 states. The total of wells and springs with a temperature over 50° C (122°F) went from 1723 to 2211, which is an increase of 28%.
There’s a lot of heat out there, I hope it gets more exploration and application. Since California imports a good deal of it’s electric power, and since demand remains high and is expected to increase, this seems like a no-brainer for a business model.
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Anthony,
I think we should focus on producing our electricity with nuclear power with proven standardized plant designs as the French have done. Standard designs would get rid of some of the issues we have with our “one of a kind” plants that made them so expensive to build. If we “overbuilt” with nuclear, we could use the excess electricity for desalinization or hydrogen production and start looking for a way to store the hydrogen for transportation. Anyway, just my two cents.
What would happen if you poured a large volume of sea water into these geothermally warm areas in Southern California and let the resulting steam vent to the atmosphere? Would that alleviate the current “drought”?
Geothermal could make a contribution but it will not be a major player in power production. We will need to build nuclear power plants as well as coal fired plants capable of producing power and also producing by products of coal e.g., natural gas, oil, and oil liquids (diesel, gasoline, jet fuels).
I like geothermal too. But be prepared for screams about potential earthquakes from the radical greenies. It might be end up being too expensive litigation wise as nuclear almost is.
There’s a downside to geothermal energy: subsidence and earthquakes
Sorry to rain on the parade…
It looks like there is a lot of energy available underground! It would be a shame not to tap it. I hadn’t thought of direct use for heating, but that seems like a wonderful idea (no steam turbine required). Look at those areas of ID, MT, and WY. Just imagine pumping up hot water to heat your house during the cold winter. I can see why Arizona is pursuing this. Almost the whole state is red! I would love to see a higher resolution map for southern California if you can find it. It looks like some of those dots might be nearby.
Cheers.
A few issues back in Popular Science was an article about a low temp geothermal power plant at an Alaska resort that replaced a $1,000/day diesel powerplant. Built by Trane, it used groundwater that was well below boiling and low 50 degree groundwater for cooling and an airconditioning refrigerant to power a gas turbine. The article mentioned that most oil-wells have appropriate temp. groundwater as a by-product sufficient to be self-powered.
We need to break the environmental lobby before they break the country.
Icelanders have been using it to generate electricity and heat there homes for years. Worth a go, in my opinion.
Underground coal fires could be a good source of geothermal heat, with the added bonus of eventually extinguishing the fire. China would certainly benefit from such a process. Pump in cold water and extract boiling water.
http://www.post-gazette.com/healthscience/20030215coalenviro4p4.asp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mine_fire
http://technology.infomine.com/enviromine/case_hist/coal%20fires/Stracher_et_al.html
Geothermal is not cheap. It was tested at Mt. Meager in BC back in the eighties and found at that time to be too expensive vs. hydro power. The one plany I am aware of in the US is in SE California. I’m not sure it is or ever has been considered economical. The one in NZ pays for part of its costs by recovery metals precipitated by flashed steam.
Now that the environmentalist have eliminated hydro as a viable source and since nukes are soo baad, maybe the costs will better or be comparable to solar, tidal or wind.
If CO2 is your alleged problem, then sanity says, nuclear is your only answer. Unless you have something entirely different than meeting energy needs in mind. It would appear there is something else in play, would it not.
Antony
Here in Iceland we have several geothermal power plants producing electricity and hot water. The photo on the top shows one of them at Nesjavellir near Thingvallavatn lake.
Thanks for your very informative website which I visit often. Sometimes I borrow information from it for my blog 🙂
Agust
Here in Northern Ontario, some people use geothermal to aid in winter heating and summer cooling. The pipes are drilled down into the Canadian Shield to a depth where the rock is a consistant 15 C. The system warms outside air in the winter and cools the inside air in the summer. In the winter, another heat source, like natrual gas or electric baseboard heaters, is needed to warm the house the last 5 to 7 C to room temperature. — John M Reynolds
First Law of Thermodynamics: There is no such thing as a free lunch.
Second Law of Thermodynamics: The better lunch is, the more it costs.
Warm water and low pressure steam are fine for space and water heating, as well as for some low temperature processes.
The real potential for geothermal is “dry hot rock” geothermal. However, drilling depth and downhole temperature currently limit access to this resource. Water availability is also an issue, since fresh water resources are already stressed; and, high temperature salt water presents another series of technical issues.
“The answer, my friends, is (not) blowin’ in the wind.”
dear anthony,
long time lurker…first time poster…appreciate your work…california has a growing compressed natural gas network…perhaps you could find time to blog about CNG technology as a solution to gasoline and imported oil…would like to hear thoughts of possible expert readers on CNG merits…tks
I still believe the future is nuclear. The application for a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain was filed two days ago, so all I can say is, “It’s about time.”
In addition, there’s still about $1 trillion of the cleanest burning coal in the world sitting idle in Utah. Somebody in Washington needs to grow a pair and challenge the Executive Order from the Clinton years that inexplicably declared the Kaiparowitz Plateau off-limits. We need that coal.
As far as geothermal, the big negative that I’ve always read in the discussions concerns the costs involved.
deadwood (00:16:29) : Geothermal is not cheap. It was tested at Mt. Meager in BC back in the eighties and found at that time to be too expensive vs. hydro power.
Hydro power is perhaps not the best comparison. Certainly not everywhere. Anyway, the geothermal energy market is indeed beginning to heat up. As the article just cited explains, one of the main drivers is the production tax credit, which now (finally) extends to geothermal energy. And as the map Anthony provided shows, there’s a lot of “low hanging fruit” available in terms of resources. And with http://www1.eere.energy.gov/geothermal/future_geothermal.html“>a moderate investment in R&D (something else which has been woefully neglected), the number of resources could that could become available is almost limitless. Hot dry rock geothermal (aka as EGS, or enhanced geothermal) is the real lodestone for the future though, and finally the DOE has been supplied some funding to explore it.
What happened outside of Basel (mentioned by John A) is indeed unfortunate. But it is also unusual. Meanwhile, in Australia, development at the Habanero site is proceeding, though somewhat behind schedule because of delivery delays of key components. However, drilling of additional wells is proceeding. What’s particularly interesting about the Habanero site is that (to the best of my knowledge) it is the first true (deep well) EGS project in the world.
This is a lot like the Rev’s electric runabout. In some places it makes a lot of sense. I believe SanFran has used geothermal for many years, or at least used to. It won’t solve all our problems, in many places it doesn’t make sense. But where it does, and can be implemented at reasonable cost, go for it.
We can’t do more nukes until we address the reprocessing issue. Too much spent fuel in cooling tanks to bury in the ground. Bush should have reversed Carter’s decision not to reprocess on day 1. France does it with little problem. We need a standard design. And build new plants away from urban areas, if only to reduce the endless lawsuits that follow.
It’s gonna take a lot of little answers. A bit here, a bit there. G-T can be one of them.
I think I remember reading a while back about a town in Europe (Germany, maybe?) that switched to geothermal to “help save the planet.” Part of the place had started to sink due to it being held up by the pressure from hot gases underneath. Bummer.
From 2004 on this subject:
http://hallofrecord.blogspot.com/2004/11/environmental-extremism-limitless.html
DTE Energy [Michigan} says this: http://my.dteenergy.com/home/savings/geothermal.html
Whoa! Anthony!! I thought I liked geothermal too, but is that WATER VAPOR I see belching–sorry, approved journalistic usage would be “spewing,” out of those geothermal stacks??? Is this a ploy to find out if there’s something the Sierra Club likes even less than coal/CO2?
AEGeneral: As far as geothermal, the big negative that I’ve always read in the discussions concerns the costs involved.
According to this article, the current levelized cost of geothermal electricity is about double that of coal, which sells for around five cents per kilowatt-hour. Then again, in the case of a geothermal plant the cost of the “fuel” is essentially free. The cost of coal is not. Thus, unlike coal, once a geothermal plant is up and running you’ve essentially locked in your price for the lifetime of the plant. The cost of operating a coal plant, on the other hand, will always be heavily dependent on the cost of coal. The operational lifetime of both types of plants is likely to be on the scale of many decades. So if you don’t try to accurately project what coal costs will be in, say, 25-30 years, you may end up shooting yourself in the foot if you base your decision on current costs alone. Let’s call that the “levelized cost projection risk”, and obviously it is a principle that relates only to an individual plant.
But in addition to the “levelized cost projection risk”, there is also another, broader concept to consider: in many new technology contexts, costs typically drop as market penetration increases. Unfortunately, market penetration doesn’t usually occur unless costs drop (or the cost of alternatives increase). This conondrum is commonly called “economy of scale”. And that’s what the production tax credit (PTC) is designed to address — it reduces the effective up-front capital costs, thus stimulating deployment of new energy technologies so that economy of scale principles can take hold. Thus, the PTC not only helps to reduce the “levelized cost projection risk” for each individual plant, it also enhances the possibility that the cost of future plants will drop. Let’s call that the “economy of scale projection risk”.
It seems to me that decisions made in the here and now have to take account of both kinds of risks. In other words, it matters less what the cost of a given energy technology is in the here and now and matters more whether that technology is going to pay off in the future. And that’s true even in a depressed economy. We in the US like to criticize the Europeans for investing in various forms of alternative energy technologies, because at present it appears they’ve been chasing expensive windmills (both figuratively and literally). I suggest, however, that in the years to come their investment may very well pay off handsomely. In much the same way that the Norwegians positioned themselves to do very well in the cell phone market, the Danes have positioned themselves in the wind energy market (it’s telling that McCain presented his “climate change” speech a couple of weeks ago in front of a Vestra wind mill farm), the Germans in solar PV, the Spaniards (and Isaelis) in solar thermal, the French in nuclear, the Icelanders and Italians in geothermal, and the Japanese in batteries, HEVs, PHEVs and EVs. There’s something very wrong with that.
For whatever reason we in the US seem to have blinders on when it comes to energy — or at least a consuming preoccupation with drills. In the US alone the energy market accounts for over a trillion dollars a year — several hundreds of billions of that are transmitted overseas, much of it filling the pockets of obnoxious regimes and swelling our trade deficit. Yet total investment in energy R&D accounts for less that 2% of that. Most of that is private investment, and mostly in oil exploration. Federal expenditures (in 2007) in all energy R&D amounted to about $3 billion — and most of that was in either fossil fuels, ethanol, or nuclear (and by the way, for geothermal research in the 2007 budget the Bush administration recommended the round sum of… $0; fortunately Congress wasn’t willing to go quite that far). In contrast, (and again in 2007) the biomedical industry (which is somewhat smaller than the energy industry) spent about 8% of private funds in R&D (most of that in pharmaceuticals) and got federal assistance to the tune of $28 billion. Certainly there’s a lot of money to be had in biomedicine, so I don’t begrudge that. But it seems to me there’s even more to be had in energy. Sooner or later we here in the US are going to have to wake up and smell the coffee. Either that or get left behind.
There are no silver bullets. The Nuclear Reduction Committee regulations have created significant finacial and time obstacles which are unlikly to be repealed. There are however, many localy available opportunities. Geothermal in the west. Dynamic hydro inland (270 navigational locks on the upper mississippi alone) and on the coast. Hydrous pyrolysis of MSW (garbage) can generate 1-2 megawatts and a barrel of diesel per ton. We can replace energy hungry aerobic treatment of sewage with energy producing anaerobic. There is no reason Amarillo and KC can’t be powered by thier stockyards. Yes there are regulartory and financial roadblocks here too, but you can look at it two ways. Every solution has a problem or there is a solution to every problem. Take geothermal. Many depleted oil and gas wells have a bottom hole temp of 400-500 degrees and can be made to produce steam while continuing to produce small amonts of oil and gas.
These guys have just about cracked it in OZ, but business plan on $40/tonne Carbon tax
http://www.geodynamics.com.au/IRM/content/home.html
It is a long way from population centers but very near large mines (Uranium).
Incidentally, it is just a nuke plant – its the natural Ur, Th, K radioactive decay that makes the heat! Good news there is a natural water source down hole.
I like it as using Oil well drilling technology which is my work…
Pericles (23:49:42) :
“Underground coal fires could be a good source of geothermal heat, with the added bonus of eventually extinguishing the fire.”
Underground coal fires can be awfully resistant to being put out. The nine remaining folks in Centralia Pennsylvania know that, everyone else has abandoned the town. Even their ZIP code has been retired. Burning for 46 years….
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia%2C_Pennsylvania