[HN Gopher] America's Geothermal Breakthrough
___________________________________________________________________
America's Geothermal Breakthrough
Author : sleepyguy
Score : 131 points
Date : 2026-04-25 19:38 UTC (19 hours ago)
HTML web link (oilprice.com)
TEXT w3m dump (oilprice.com)
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| I worked on geothermal control systems a decade or so back. There
| are some less obvious applications for geothermal that reduce
| electric use (as opposed to generating electricity).
|
| The systems I worked on were for cooling larger structures like
| commercial greenhouses, gov installations and mansions. 64deg
| degree water would be pumped up from 400' down, run thru a series
| of chillers (for a/c) and then returned underground - about 20deg
| or 25deg warmer.
|
| I always thought this method could be used to provide a/c for
| neighborhoods, operated as a neighborhood utility. I've not seen
| it done tho. I've seen neighborhood owned water supplies and
| sewer systems; it tells me the ownership part seems feasible.
| wood_spirit wrote:
| In the nordics it is common to have ground source heat pumps
| (brine in closed circuit pipe or bore hole) that are run
| backwards in summer to cool the house while actually assisting
| in storing heat back in the ground to extract in the winter.
| It's a bit like regenerative breaking on electric cars.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| There was a new in 1988 house in Champaign, Illinois, USA
| that used the same system, and i mention that because it was
| a normal modern house, and it's the only one i've heard of
| with that system.
|
| It seems so smart.
| maxerickson wrote:
| It's expensive. A relative has one in the northern Great
| Lakes, they wouldn't have installed it if their house had
| access to natural gas.
| zrail wrote:
| Our house came with one and we upgraded the unit a few
| years ago. It's very efficient in terms of units of
| energy consumed, but in my area of the world gas is
| significantly cheaper than electricity so it ends up
| being expensive to run.
|
| That said, we will install solar at some point and then
| it'll be "free" HVAC.
| zdragnar wrote:
| There's a pretty significant upfront cost in getting them
| drilled, and many homes need the vertical drilling if they
| don't have sufficient yard space for a horizontal system.
| It gets harder if you have your own septic drain field too,
| as that will complete for yard space.
|
| The cost difference is pretty massive- 3-10x for a vertical
| system. If you live in a city or a suburb with tiny lots,
| that's your only option though.
|
| Nat gas and central AC are way cheaper.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Air source heat pumps are insanely more efficient and
| just plain better these days too. It used to be that if
| the air was below 40F you couldn't heat your house with a
| heat pump. Now, you can heat your house even when it's
| -10F
| SR2Z wrote:
| If you can tolerate the price, I am _confident_ that you
| will pretty much always have better results using the
| Earth as your thermal exhaust, because you don't have to
| dig very far to find a large region that's pretty much
| always at 50 F.
| wood_spirit wrote:
| The downvotes are unfair.
|
| The price of things - heat pumps and alternatives - in
| different regions - even different regions within the US
| - varies by what people are prepared to pay not what they
| cost to produce.
|
| The nordics have traditionally had cheap heat pumps
| whereas piped gas is only in the biggest cities and I've
| never seen bottled gas in the countryside. The competitor
| used to be cheap electricity and wood. Ground source heat
| pumps for rural install have been priced to compete with
| wood.
|
| In the US the market could be shaped by regulation and
| taxation etc. It's the choice of the US to have cheap
| fossil fuels and not embrace tech instead.
| hvb2 wrote:
| > Air source heat pumps are insanely more efficient
|
| Citation needed?
|
| Efficient how? I'm sure a heat pump designed for a narrow
| range of input temperatures AND working with water which
| can transport a lot more heat should easily be more
| efficient.
|
| https://www.energysage.com/heat-pumps/compare-air-source-
| geo... Seems to disagree
| sgerenser wrote:
| I assuming he means insanely more efficient than they
| used to be, not more efficient than ground-source
| (awkward wording though). I suppose they can also be
| described as more efficient in installation time, cost
| and equipment than ground source, but clearly not in
| operating efficiency.
| wood_spirit wrote:
| Yes air source are really good value in cost
| effectiveness terms, especially when a house has an
| existing central heating system they can connect to. But
| their COP - whilst dramatically improving in the last
| 10-20 years - is still behind ground source, particularly
| in the north during winter
| AngryData wrote:
| Although if you needed a new septic field, I would think
| ground source thermal would be significantly deeper than
| a drain field which is only like a foot or so down so you
| could stack them.
| Y-bar wrote:
| I paid about EUR 4500 for a 114 meter drill hole
| including installation of brine (ethanol in my case
| actually) and removal of spoils. My 8kW heat+water pump
| was about EUR 7000.
|
| I can spec out a gas burner for about EUR 4000 and a
| central AC for EUR 5000, but I bet the efficiency of the
| ground source heater would quickly trump the cost of
| buying gas regularly.
| zdragnar wrote:
| That's insanely cheap compared to what we can get around
| here. Most installs I've heard of from people in the US
| are in the $20-50,000 range, depending on the size of
| their home and number of wells needed.
| Y-bar wrote:
| Yet it did not feel very cheap to me. The price of the
| pump had increased from 4800 only a year earlier due to
| the war in Ukraine.
|
| There were a number of steps I had to go through. First I
| had to file for permission at the County Office, where
| they verify that drilling in the area is acceptable and
| that the intended pump follows regulations with respect
| to cooling media, and that the drilling company was
| certified to drill for my needs. It did cost about 70
| euros.
|
| I needed effective zero plumbing work in the house as it
| was already prepared to accept heating from a pump like
| that. Perhaps that is one of the major costs in USA?
| ninalanyon wrote:
| No it's not. It exists but it's certainly not common for
| individual dwelling to use ground source heat pumps, at least
| in Norway. It is more common in Sweden[1] but still far less
| common than air source and over 90% of heat pump
| installations in Norway are air source[2].
|
| The only ground source installations I can think of in Norway
| serve large office buildings and similar. The largest heat
| pump installation I know of in Norway is actually a third
| kind: water source[3]. It takes heat from the Drammen river
| to provide heat for a district heating system and for keeping
| the town centre clear of ice in the winter as well as
| supplying the new hospital with heat.
|
| I imagine that the rest of the Nordic region is similar.
|
| See:
|
| [1] http://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream
| /JR...
|
| [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221313
| 882...
|
| [3] https://energiteknikk.net/2023/11/drammen-fjernvarme-
| storst-...
| deliciousturkey wrote:
| In Finland around 50% of new single-family homes use ground
| source heat pumps. So it's definitely popular here.
| emil-lp wrote:
| 3 schools in my neighborhood (barneskole, ungdomsskole &
| videregaende) all use ground source heat pumps.
| sumea wrote:
| If by Nordics you mean Norway, Sweden and Finland, then the
| most correct way to say would be that ground source heat
| pumps for redidential heating are (very) common in Sweden
| and Finland, especially in newer and larger buildings.
| Norway is somewhat different in energy and climate
| perspective than its eastern neighbours.
|
| The biggest reason to not install ground source heat pump
| is high installation cost. This means that it makes more
| sense for larger residential buildings. Also If you have
| district heating available then this might be more
| economical in the long run.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Isn't that similar to how neighborhood heat pumps work?
|
| https://www.araner.com/blog/district-heating-in-sweden-effic...
| hunterpayne wrote:
| Heat pumps require a specific temperate differential to work.
| So they work in zones with are a bit hotter or colder than
| you would like and so require moderate amounts of heating or
| cooling. They don't work in temperate zones nor in very hot
| or cold places. So Santa Fe or Minneapolis for example they
| work but Mexico City or San Francisco they don't. If you are
| in a place where they work and that isn't too dense or has
| earthquakes, go for it. If not, don't. There are businesses
| that will help you understand when they do and don't make
| sense. Those businesses don't sell heat pumps though (the
| businesses that sell things will almost always tell you it
| works, even when it doesn't, for example PV in the UK doesn't
| work).
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| > pv in the UK doesn't work
|
| tell that to 6% of UK electric production
| https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz947djd3d3o (up from 5%
| in 2024
| sokoloff wrote:
| I've never heard a claim that heat pumps won't work well in
| a climate like San Francisco and, from looking at the
| annual temperature patterns, it seems like both air source
| and ground source heat pumps should work extremely well as
| they do in the "shoulder seasons" here in New England.
| hyperbovine wrote:
| Wait Minneapolis is definitely very cold for about half the
| year.
| rcxdude wrote:
| Heat pumps have gotten a lot better, you need a pretty
| extreme climate for them to start to struggle, even the
| air-source ones.
|
| (And PV works well enough in the UK for it to be a no-
| brainer to put on residentials roofs, which is on the whole
| the most expensive way to deploy it. Though this is in
| large part due to the way that it competes with retail
| prices and not wholesale prices)
| Animats wrote:
| Shallow geothermal works fine for heating. And you can use the
| ground as a heat sink. But if you want to generate power, you
| need to get down to where temperatures can boil water. That's
| deeper than most oil wells. Fervo Energy claims to have found
| 270C at 3350 meters well depth. That's progress.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > if you want to generate power, you need to get down to
| where temperatures can boil water. That's deeper than most
| oil wells.
|
| That's going to be very dependant on location.
|
| Here in NZ there are regions where water is boiling at
| surface level.
|
| According to the below, 18% of our power is produced with it.
|
| https://www.eeca.govt.nz/insights/energy-in-new-
| zealand/rene...
| Animats wrote:
| "New Zealand has an abundant supply of geothermal energy
| because we are located on the boundary between two tectonic
| plates. ... Total geothermal electricity capacity in New
| Zealand stands at over 900 MW, making us the fifth largest
| generator of geothermal in the world. It has been estimated
| that there is sufficient geothermal resource for another
| 1,000 MW of electricity generation."
|
| That's not all that much. That total would be about equal
| to the 75th largest nuclear plant in the world.
|
| Good sites where high temperatures are near the surface are
| rare. California has a few, but no promising locations for
| more.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > That's not all that much.
|
| We don't have many people. It gets worse's though, we
| burn coal and are looking to fund a gas terminal. We have
| abundant other ways of generating power and subsidise an
| aluminium smelter for some reason.
|
| Coming up next, data centres.
|
| 'Clean, Green New Zealand.'
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| Is there any earthquake risk from drilling near tectonic
| plates?
| glaucon wrote:
| > That's not all that much
|
| May not be much in world terms but here in NZ national
| demand maxes out at around 5.5GW so bringing another GW
| on stream would be quite handy. Most of the geothermal is
| a lot closer to Auckland* than our hydro is so so that
| would be another positive aspect.
|
| * Auckland has 25% of the population so a corresponding
| amount of energy has to be pushed its way.
| thinkcontext wrote:
| You brought the conversation in a circle, since the point
| of this new technology is the geology you speak of is rare.
| dboreham wrote:
| There are also places in the US with boiling water at the
| surface. I live near one of those places so always curious
| about geothermal. There's a spot near my house in a creek
| bed where snow always melts even in deep winter so
| apparently I have some potential heat source. Our well
| water is cold though.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Not near me, but hot water spring, rivers and beaches
| made for a nice soak every now and again.
|
| Turning them all into power plants would be a shame, but
| there is plenty of space for both.
| quijoteuniv wrote:
| I think this looks interesting, but still very early stage.
| The "150 GW revolution" sounds more like theoretical
| potential, not something we will see soon in real deployment.
|
| Main problems: drilling is still expensive, managing induced
| seismic activity is not trivial, permitting can take long
| time, and you also need transmission infrastructure. Also not
| yet proven that companies like Fervo can scale this in
| reliable and low-cost way.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Nope. To efficiently tap geothermal energy, you need to boil
| _something_ but not necessarily water. Isopentane, for
| example, boils at 28o at standard pressure, so they
| pressurize the secondary loop to raise the boiling point
| close to whatever the primary loop temperature is.
|
| The idea that geothermal only works well at steam
| temperatures is outdated 20th-century thinking.
| emmelaich wrote:
| But the energy in boiling isopentane would be less right?
| jeffbee wrote:
| Yes, the efficiency is worse, but as is also the case for
| solar power you need to get used to not caring much about
| efficiency. It is nuclear energy where the primary side
| is provided free of charge. The Carnot efficiency is
| almost without relevance.
| micro2588 wrote:
| In geothermal there is still a lot of interest in
| efficiency and exploring different working fluids because
| binary systems now have efficiencies of 10-20%. That is
| why you see companies like Sage Geosystems working on
| developing / deploying supercritical CO2 turbines to try
| and boost practical power densities.
| bialpio wrote:
| > But if you want to generate power, you need to get down to
| where temperatures can boil water.
|
| Why is that the case? Can't you go down to where it's like
| 70-80 deg C and close the gap using heat pumps? Yes, you need
| to put some energy in, but I would expect that the whole
| process would still be energy-positive at _some_ temperature
| that 's lower than 100C?
| solarpunk wrote:
| I think you're describing what is known as "district energy"
| systems.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| District heating and chilled water is uneconomical for single-
| family homes. It does work well in medium to high density
| areas.
| gambiting wrote:
| I don't know how economical that is, but just as an anecdote
| - the town I'm from in Poland has district heating to all
| single family homes, town of about 20k people. And
| coincidentally, I now live in the UK and a new estate near me
| has district heating to all the houses they are building, not
| apartment blocks. So it must make some sense to someone, or
| they wouldn't be outfitting 100+ houses this way.
| hunterpayne wrote:
| "I don't know how economical that is"
|
| Sure you do. Think about it. Its just drilling a hole and
| making electricity from the heat. We have been able to do
| this for a very long time. So if people aren't really doing
| it much, its not economical. If it was now becoming
| economical, the article would describe some new way of
| doing it that makes it economical. The article doesn't, so
| you "know" it isn't.
|
| PS This has been tried many time, it only works in very
| specific situations, usually places where building a full
| PP doesn't make sense or where you are making a lot of
| electricity for some other purpose (mining usually).
| LeFantome wrote:
| The "new" way is plasma drilling.
| thinkcontext wrote:
| That's still a science project, they are piloting zapping
| a small hole to 100m. Very uncertain whether it will
| amount to anything.
| thinkcontext wrote:
| > Its just drilling a hole and making electricity from
| the heat
|
| District heating does not involve making electricity.
| Y-bar wrote:
| Sometimes district heating and electricity generation
| does combine though:
|
| > Wartsila's combined power generation and heat recovery
| plant offering comprises solutions for combined heat and
| power (CHP) including dynamic district heating (DDH),
| district cooling and power (DCAP) and trigeneration for
| applications that require both heating and cooling.
|
| https://www.wartsila.com/energy/engine-power-plant-
| solutions...
| quickthrowman wrote:
| Not always, but as the sibling noted, there are plenty of
| combined heat and power plants. They recover as much of
| the energy as possible from the exhaust gas streams and
| run pretty efficiently.
| gambiting wrote:
| >>Sure you do. Think about it. Its just drilling a hole
| and making electricity from the heat
|
| ...what? What does that have to do with district heating?
| The one in Poland is coal fired, the one in the UK is
| electric.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| At least in parts of Eastern Europe (especially the former
| GDR) district heating systems were introduced as a response
| to the oil crises of the 70s, resulting price shocks and
| the transport of coal to households being very labor and
| resource incentive [1].
|
| [1] https://www.ndr.de/geschichte/schauplaetze/Windkraft-
| und-Erd...
| quickthrowman wrote:
| It's uneconomical in an already built out area or a non
| central planned economy, and also the US is special case
| since we have dirt cheap natural gas that is used for
| heating.
|
| Digging up streets to run distribution lines, running
| service drops to every existing house, installing a heat
| exchanger and valves in every house is astronomically
| expensive given the amount of energy used by a single
| residence.
|
| If you're building out a new neighborhood on a greenspace
| plot, installing the district heating/cooling piping is
| much cheaper since you're already laying electric, water,
| sewer, and mane gas lines.
| mlwiese wrote:
| Framingham, MA has a geothermal system using ground source heat
| pumps like what you are describing
|
| https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/news/first-networked-geother...
| limagnolia wrote:
| Whisper Valley in Austin Texas is one example of a neighborhood
| geothermal installation:
| https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/geothermal/texas-whispe...
|
| Maybe not quite exactly what you envision.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > Maybe not quite exactly what you envision.
|
| I'm too zonked to pick out the method from the article - but
| I'll offer that geo methods can be region specific. What I
| described fits the SE US, with our 13 month summers and
| abundant underground water.
| wesapien wrote:
| One of the problems with the data center boom is its use of
| fresh water. How does geo-thermal plants use water and how
| much?
| micro2588 wrote:
| The water at these temperature / depths has a lot of
| dissolved salts and minerals so it's not (human / ag) usable.
| Modern designs are closed loop systems where production wells
| bringing the hot water to the surface go through a heat
| exchanger to a different working fluid to drive the turbine
| and then is re-injected back into the reservoir. There is
| consumptive water use for fracking the reservoirs in these
| types of enhanced geothermal systems, but beyond that it's
| more water redistribution in the area around the well systems
| where re-injection and production lead to different
| pressurization from pumping / natural ground water
| replenishment rates.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > One of the problems with the data center boom is its use of
| fresh water. How does geo-thermal plants use water and how
| much?
|
| Baring leaks, ground source heat pump geo will consume no
| water at all. Water is pumped from one layer of the aquifer
| and is returned to a slightly higher layer.
| ksec wrote:
| I dont know why this keeps coming up? It is a closed loop
| system. The water aren't used at all.
| justnoise wrote:
| Many data centers use evaporative cooling.
| msandford wrote:
| It's a closed loop on the geo side sure.
|
| How do you cool the steam off enough to condense so it can
| go and be boiler feed water again?
|
| Lots of power plants use cooling towers for this which are
| typically evaporative. Some are dry, sure, but most are
| wet.
| Animats wrote:
| Oh, Fervo Energy again. They're trying to IPO, hence the hype.
| Wikipedia's warning: _This article reads like a press release or
| a news article and may be largely based on routine coverage.
| (February 2026) This article may have been created or edited in
| return for undisclosed payments, a violation of Wikipedia 's
| terms of use. It may require cleanup to comply with Wikipedia's
| content policies, particularly neutral point of view._
|
| Here's a more realistic evaluation of Fervo.[1]
|
| [1] https://www.latitudemedia.com/news/what-fervos-approach-
| says...
| w1 wrote:
| This isn't really an evaluation of the company, just explaining
| how they had to use different financing approaches as they grew
| and derisked their technology (which makes sense).
|
| Compared to some other new approaches for getting clean base
| load power, it seems like they've been pretty grounded and
| methodical.
| Animats wrote:
| They're way ahead of the microwave drilling people.
|
| There's no reason why this shouldn't work. But they've been
| at it for 9 years, with considerable funding, and it doesn't
| really work yet. That's a concern.
| hunterpayne wrote:
| "There's no reason why this shouldn't work."
|
| Geothermal has had the same problem for its entire history.
| That problem is that the water being heated goes through
| the ground (not in a pipe) to "gather" more energy. But
| this means that when the water comes back up, it has a lot
| of weird salts in it (and other things). Those salts cause
| corrosion, lots and lots of corrosion, far more than even a
| maritime environment. So the plant needs to be shutdown a
| lot of the time for repairs. And that's what makes it
| uneconomical. Also, the salts often contain things that
| require special handling which also increases costs.
|
| PS This is why geothermal works in Iceland where there is
| so much geothermal heat they can use pipes. In CA, they
| can't so it doesn't work there.
| micro2588 wrote:
| Fervo uses engineered reservoirs in granitic basement
| rock so this is less of an issue. Hot rock in a working
| fluid can still dissolve silicates out of the granite and
| lead to scaling / degradation of the flow rates through
| the reservoir and that is a risk but chemical anti
| scaling treatments are used to reduce this.
|
| CA has the worlds largest geothermal power complex in the
| Geysers. That one field produces an equivalent amount of
| power as all the geothermal in Iceland and there are
| others.
| mgfist wrote:
| > There's no reason why this shouldn't work. But they've
| been at it for 9 years, with considerable funding, and it
| doesn't really work yet. That's a concern.
|
| It does work. They've had a pilot project producing 3
| megawatts since 2023. But scaling takes a lot of time and
| money, particularly when it's something new and you have to
| go through a lot of operational learning.
|
| Shale took something like 30 years to become a thing. 9
| years is nothing in the energy space.
| micro2588 wrote:
| It does work technically I think it is still an open
| question if it can work economically. There are issues of
| commercially viable flow rates / thermal decline rates
| that are harder physical limits you run up against and
| the pilot design doesn't address. In human timescale
| terms it's more like heat mining rather than renewable
| heat due to thermal depletion rate vs replenishment rate.
| These systems have a targeted lifetime of ~20-30 years
| and net power will decline over this timespan.
| tptacek wrote:
| That's Wikipedia warning about the quality of the Wikipedia
| page, not about the company.
| mskogly wrote:
| The whole continent of America made a breakthrough?
| mc32 wrote:
| You know how the United Arab Emirates are known as the
| Emirates, how the United Mexican Sates are known as Mexico and
| how the United States of America is known as America? Are you
| unfamiliar with what synecdoche is?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _how the United Mexican Sates are known as Mexico_
|
| I can't believe I didn't know that's Mexico's official name!
| TIL!
| ButlerianJihad wrote:
| Yes. North America.
|
| United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (formerly NAFTA)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States%E2%80%93Mexico%E...
|
| https://www.ghy.com/trade-compliance/guidance-on-us-energy-i...
|
| https://www.heritage.org/trade/report/analysis-the-united-st...
| LeFantome wrote:
| Now USMCA (if you are American) or CUSMA (if you are
| Canadian) or T-MEC (if you are Mexican).
|
| Canadian United States Mexico Agreement.
|
| It is up for review July 1st I believe.
| dmix wrote:
| It expires in 2036
| defrost wrote:
| Or, as you've presented, three of the twenty three
| independent states and territories of North America.
| LeFantome wrote:
| There is no continent called "America".
| mijailt wrote:
| Surprisingly, this depends on your culture.
|
| Depending on where you're from you'll have been taught a
| different set of continents (North + South America / America,
| Europe + Asia / Eurasia).
| jmward01 wrote:
| Here is an article that is a bit old but discusses the start of
| things [1]. It would be a bit ironic if fracking tech helped get
| us further from using natural gas. I think the reality will be if
| this gets established we will see rapid improvement as scale
| comes on line so if it is remotely economical now it will be
| massively better in 5-10 years. Of course the 'if' applies.
|
| [1] (2023) https://time.com/6302342/fervo-fracking-technology-
| geotherma...
| davidw wrote:
| There's one of those sites near where I live. The numbers would
| be amazing if true, but feel a lot like "to good to be true" to
| me
|
| https://www.opb.org/article/2025/10/06/super-hot-rocks-geoth...
| micro2588 wrote:
| Newberry Volcano is too good to be true in that there are few
| (outside of Yellowstone) equivalent sources of geothermal
| awesomeness at similar depths in the USA. Good for research bad
| for generalization of drilling costs to hit similar
| temperatures. There are federal protections for geothermal
| drilling anywhere near Yellowstone.
| pedalpete wrote:
| According to google, this would be almost 30% of total US energy
| production (135gw-150gw) and nearly 5% of total US energy
| consumption.
|
| But what is the "breakthrough" if there is one? The article
| doesn't really suggest any breakthrough that is unlocking this
| potential energy? Or maybe I'm looking for a technological
| breakthrough where there isn't one.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| 4th paragraph of TFA:
|
| > Several companies are now building upon existing techniques
| for accessing geothermal resources by integrating enhanced
| geothermal systems (EGS) into operations. While conventional
| geothermal systems produce energy using hot water or steam,
| pumped from naturally occurring hydrothermal reservoirs trapped
| in rock formations underground, EGS use innovative drilling
| technologies, such as those used in fracking operations, to
| drill horizontally and create hydrothermal reservoirs where
| they don't currently exist.
| nusl wrote:
| So it basically says nothing useful other than try to
| generate hype and make them look good.
| thinkcontext wrote:
| No. Current geothermal projects need very specific geology
| to work, its very rare which is why geothermal is such a
| small blip in the overall energy picture. Enhanced
| Geothermal Systems (EGS), the technique Fervo is using, can
| create the conditions to be able to generate electricity.
| The hope is this will greatly expand the number of projects
| that can be developed.
|
| Doesn't that sound useful to you?
| nandomrumber wrote:
| Sounds like marketing hype to me.
|
| Geothermal reservoirs exist at depth.
|
| Drilling horizontally doesn't magically reduce the depth, nor
| the problem that drilling in to hot rock is like drilling in
| to plasticine, at least for temperatures worth working with.
| micro2588 wrote:
| In traditional fault hosted (not magmatic) geothermal the
| convection of the water up the fault brings the thermal
| energy closer to the surface where drilling depths are
| economical. This convection heats the surrounding rock and
| over hundred thousand - million of years brings the
| background temperature around a large volume at depth
| surrounding these systems considerably above traditional
| background geothermal gradients. By drilling into a much
| larger volume of impermeable hot rock surrounding a very
| small permeable fault hosted section you can considerably
| enhance the power potential of a traditional fault hosted
| geothermal system (the E in EGS). That is what Fervo is
| doing and why their projects are situated right next to
| traditional geothermal power plants.
|
| The assumption is that if you can increase drilling
| efficiencies enough then you don't even need a fault hosted
| or similar system to bring that energy close to the
| surface, you can just drill down deep enough to get at
| similar temperatures. That is a big assumption in the
| economics.
| sunshinesnacks wrote:
| EGS has been around for at least 15 years. See AltaRock
| Energy as an example (I'm sure there are others). They
| started almost 20 years ago.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AltaRock_Energy
| hunterpayne wrote:
| There isn't one. They are trying to politically pressure a
| utility to build some geothermal plant. But utilities have
| engineers who will tell their bosses that this plan doesn't
| work. So the companies selling the geothermal plant are trying
| to politically pressure the utility to do yet another thing
| that they know won't work. PG&E for example has several
| geothermal plants which have been economic disasters and were
| and are being shutdown.
| mgfist wrote:
| > PG&E for example has several geothermal plants which have
| been economic disasters and were and are being shutdown.
|
| Those are very different from EGS
| micro2588 wrote:
| The core breakthroughs were working with partners to develop
| PDC bits that enable high rates of penetration in drilling
| out these horizontal wells in high temp granitic rock and
| then demonstrating plug / perf fracture networks that have a
| high engineered permeability in these source rocks to support
| economical flow rates and heat transfer. These were
| considerable advances over previous efforts.
|
| There will be other learning by doing advances in how you
| structure your power plant design to take advantage of these
| to make practical long term power production possible (well
| spacing and injection / production placement / flow rate and
| temperature decline management).
| skybrian wrote:
| My understanding is that it's due to better drilling
| techniques. The industry learned a fair bit from fracking and
| they're learning more from experience as they apply it to
| geothermal.
|
| No particular breakthrough, but there's a learning curve and
| they learn more as they do more. Other industries sometimes
| work that way, too.
|
| https://www.austinvernon.site/blog/geothermalupdate2026.html
| idontwantthis wrote:
| Is 150GW enough for a "revolution"? That's about 10% of current
| total power production.
| smallerize wrote:
| Solar is at 7%. It's very significant.
| edbaskerville wrote:
| Solar and wind, with battery storage, can get you to say 90%,
| and then you only need 10% from other sources like geothermal
| and nuclear to fully decarbonize.
| runicelf wrote:
| Would be great to see this in our lifetime
| typon wrote:
| What is the point of building energy outside of solar farms? I'm
| sincerely asking
| applied_heat wrote:
| Night time? But batteries! Several cloudy days in a row? More
| batteries! Cost? -> a mix of sources becomes attractive
| typon wrote:
| https://imgur.com/a/dV8gk3R
|
| can you find curves like this for any other power source?
|
| also batteries are getting exponentially cheap too
| micro2588 wrote:
| These are typically representative of cost performance per
| watt of one part of a more complex deployed energy system.
| Things like the aluminum / steal for the container /
| framing, copper / aluminum for the transmission and wiring,
| land and labor for installation decline at much less
| aggressive rates or increase over time.
|
| In almost all pareto optimal least cost energy system
| models that I've seen, high penetration of solar, wind,
| batteries plus some minority amount of (clean) baseload
| power is the most capital efficient energy system.
| AngryData wrote:
| An inexhaustible 24/7 production capable plant has many
| advantages over solar and maintaining large most types of
| battery banks.
| energy123 wrote:
| Cost is like 90-99% of what matters. Last year, China
| installed 300GW of new renewables and 0GW of geothermal,
| despite geothermal being "an inexhaustible 24/7 production
| capable".
|
| Geothermal will compete with solar if they can get the cost
| low enough. I hope they succeed!
| metalman wrote:
| this looks like a search for fluffy money durring an energy
| crisis.
|
| Turbines are completly mature, and nothing dealing with some new
| deap drilling breakthrough or heat exhanger advancement, or more
| efficient and durable pumps, crittical CO2, or H2O ?, not yet.
| Existing geothermal plants use the same generation technology as
| a coal plant, but use near surface heat assosiated with volcanoes
| and hot springs, and there is a distinct limit on more of that.
| Melatonic wrote:
| Those geothermal plants up by Mammoth Lakes are looking like a
| great idea right now
| Aboutplants wrote:
| While I'm not extremely bullish on large scale geothermal, much
| like with Housing, we need any and all types of it.
| RITESH1985 wrote:
| I work in nuclear sector and if geothermal power works, its
| better to use. Given the huge timeline we have for our projects,
| the regulatory nooks and the large initial capital requirements,
| geothermal could be a solution, though not the only one to rely
| on. The basic economics metric for any generating plant is the
| levelized cost of electricity (LCOE), the total cost to build and
| operate a power plant over its lifetime divided by the total
| electricity output dispatched from the plant over that period.
| This again is lower for geothermal as compared to nuclear.
| m0llusk wrote:
| With all the exotic drilling tech making fracking work, it seems
| like geothermal is a natural pivot since much of the challenge is
| controlling the cost of drilling deeply.
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