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Geothermal Power Is a Climate Moon Shot Beneath Our Feet (www.newyorker.com)

submitted 3 days ago by kalkulat to c/[email protected]

29 comments fedilink hide all child comments

"This road is long, and much of the map remains blank. The biggest problem is drilling miles through hot rock, safely. If scientists can do that, however, next-generation geothermal power could supply clean energy for eons."

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Your absolutely right, I didn't read the full article. It was clearly a puff piece. There is no new science here.

Heat pump doesn't just refer to the home heating and cooling systems, it can also be refer to any process that can boost the temperature up to the usable temperature.

Current geothermal systems dont require super critical steam right out of the ground, they boost the temp from relatively low temps (<180c) up to usable temperature. This technology has existed for decades, and can be rolled out right now, no moon shots required. Oil companies have dug down 12km, which is enough to get to 180 across a huge portion of the US.

https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/56b679/us_temperatures_at_the_depth_of_10_km_62_mi/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_cycle

I'm sorry about the fusion comment, which was rude, but I haven't been deliberately rude to you, I'd appreciate the same.

[–] glimse 3 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I think we were both being rude but I'm willing to drop it

The goal of this new project from Quaise (what the article refers to) is digging deeper and cheaper. We are physically able to get to the depths needed but it's prohibitively expensive. If the technology works (it does) and is reliable (remains to be seen outside of a lab), it's a HUGE deal because now suddenly geothermal is cost-effective.

Also worth noting that something cool about their approach is the tunnel creates it's own pipe

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You're right, i was being rude as well. Apologies for the rudeness.

If they can be cheaper, this may have an impact, but they dont seem to have any numbers to back up their cheapness claims? They seem to be spruiking their speed instead, but thats only one part of the cost.

And their drill tip, while fast, is a relatively uncommon piece of kit, and requires significant amount of power to run (1MW to hit 70m/s), so its probably not going to be usable in less developed areas, and scaling their processes will be interesting.

I'll look forward to them publishing their costs when they complete their fullsize trials.

[–] glimse 2 points 13 hours ago

They only have to be cheaper for deep drilling which is what's currently prohibitively expensive - traditional drilling is still used for half the job.

It's very, very new technology but they have to start somewhere. The rest of geothermal (running the power plant itself) is figured out but a drilling deeper brings significantly more power