Geothermal Energy Explained - A Not So Hot Solution?
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- Опубликовано: 8 фев 2021
- Geothermal Energy Explained - A Not So Hot Solution? Go to brilliant.org/Undecided to sign up for free. And also, the first 200 people will get 20% off their annual premium membership. What if I told you there was an always-on, carbon free, renewable power source deep beneath the earth's surface. Why haven't we been using this power source, literally available under our feet, as much as possible? Let's look at the explanation behind Geothermal energy and it's challenges ... one of which is a little ... ground-breaking.
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So what do you think of geothermal energy? Be sure to check out my video The Mechanical Battery Explained: A Flywheel Comeback. ruclips.net/video/8X2U7bDNcPM/видео.html
Even if we cant use it for energy production. It would be great for heating and folding building. The saving on energy could be measurable especially in colder climates.
@@jeffhodgson9963 I agree. If only drilling cost was cheap enough to enable buildings use the heat below ground (doesn't have to be as deep) to heat the building during winter is cold climate.
Yeah, I don't think power generation is really where geothermal is best suited. I certainly don't think I'd ever consider installing a system like that on my house like is consider solar power. I'm definitely considering geothermal for my heating and cooling needs though. I'm designing a 7000sqft garage-mahal, and the power savings over even the best regular ductless system should pay for itself
It seems to me, here in the United States, that oil and gas exploration has already drilled tens if thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of exploratory bore holes. Most of them were likely "dry" holes that got capped. So, why not survey those holes for the candidates most likely to be productive for geothermal? If even 10% of them turned into useful geothermal sources, wouldn't simply reopening a previously capped bore hole greatly reduce the costs, even if some further drilling was needed to make it productive?
I think geothermal energy should be explored/used for the critical energy need in case there is for a too long period of time no solar and wind. You can't really store the power requirements for 3-5 days of power for your entire country, having geothermal power for the essential infrastructure like the hospitals would be a great advantage i think 🙂
this is actually a field where the oil industry can easily and cheaply improve the process.
It may be a good transition for them.
I work for an oilfield service company. In this difficult time, our company has been quoting to some geothermal companies. The expertise is definitely available.
@@zinaj9437 yeah thats a good alternative to contiue evolving.
Some oilfield service companies are already investing to diversify their portfolios
Not now
Nice to see more content about geothermal energy. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for watching! Lots of technologies like this that need more attention.
I love geothermal energy. There's just something about steam. As an engineer, I designed a series of valves for California Energy at the Salton Sea at a cost of $1.1 million. Also, some valves for a field in Guatemala, and in Indonesia. These were mostly of the flash steam type. I didn't directly encounter "hot rock" or binary systems. But they were definitely fascinating. Really enjoyed this video!
Nothing beats heat pump. 😁
That's really interesting. You mean $1.1 million is how much the plant itself cost to design/build or were you saying that's how much you were payed to design it? I've been eying some land in the Salton sea to try to build one of those newfangled geothermal power/lithium byproduct harvesters there and would love to talk more.
@@Noafloaf829 I think he's saying the valves cost $1.1 million.
What kind of engineer are you?
Very interesting. I'm an engineer myself, but I work with robotics and automation so i can only guess about this type of technology. What are your thoughts on this technology?
I worked organic Rankine cycle development, what you call binary system, design and development for several years and had exposure to a lot of this information and technology over a decade ago. The biggest issue was installation costs were less than predictable and that combined with coming to market as the 2008 financial collapse hit killed the momentum in the industry at that time.
I have a bit of experience on geothermal. One of the biggest problems has been minerals in the fluids. In general the Earths geothermal gradient is 25-30 degrees C per 1000m so a 5-6000m hole can get you about 150C most places. The drilling industry can easily do that. So it is scalable. One of the best technologies I’ve seen is “Eavor Loop” since they isolate the system from the environment and eliminate the mineralized fluid problems. The fracked geothermal wells could work but would still have the mineralised fluid problem.
Allan, I have to agree with you about Eavor Loop: eavor.com/
This company has already demonstrated the renewable future for BigOil, where they can leverage their existing financial resources, technical expertise in geology & drilling, and trained labor force to develop new highly distributed 24/7 base load power. This technology can potentially replace obsolete retired nuclear base load capacity in many locations, especially in the western US. It will cost more than wind & solar, but it’s the essential base load capacity that wind & solar can’t deliver.
The college I graduated from, Missouri S&T, actually converted the whole campus over to geothermal energy a few years ago. Quite the disruption on campus when they were installing everything, but has worked well since then! That campus has always had interesting solutions to its power needs. Around WWII, a coal fired power plant was built which was only decommissioned just a few years ago, just before the geothermal solution was installed.
Perdue U. put in, I think, 10,000 wells. A local junior college put in 280 wells to 400 feet to heat/cool a new building.
I think it’s an awesome way to switch from oil dependency. Also reduce the job displacement of people that work in oil drilling.
A great option would be to use geothermal Climon and already drilled oil Wells. It would be easy to run pipe through an already drilled well just for heat transfer. There is a way to make it a closed system without producing CO2.
You could do that to power up something like a hydrogen battery production line, in the middle of nowhere, but oil holes are generally too far from energy grids.
Your tech vocabulary always makes you sound like an expert in whichever field you’re talking about. Great job! 👍
Not to be confused with residential geothermal. Using solar gains in land mass and water.
It's definitely a win win situation if you count the fact that all the people working on fossil fuels can actually work as engineers in geothermal plants. But definitely we need more investments from the governments in order to achieve a green electricity grid. Nice video, you have summarised so much information in 10min video
Spock and Captain Kirk could use their phaser weapons to vaporize rock. Surely, in 2022, we should be able to do something similar to drill 20km underground. Matt, time to do a video on the viability of Quaise Energy.
Even before becoming aware of the methods of harvesting geothermal energy it has occured to me that, theoretically, it would be possible to reduce the power of earthquakes by lubricating faults in the earth's crust. The earthquakes would be triggered before massive amounts of energy could develope. Perhaps the Korean quake mentioned here would have happened anyway and, when it did, would have been more destructive. So, is it possible the that 'ground breaking' qualitiy of EGS systems could be turned into a positive?
Unfortunately injecting fluids underground for 'fracking' has created a lot of earthquake damage where none existed before, examples in NE Oklahoma and Arkansas. Be careful when injecting fluid deep under ground it does have a history of creating problems.
This might sound very silly but if you stand back and think about electricity it's bonkers. I don't know what's more amazing? The fact that it exists, or the fact that we discovered it and then ran with it in so many ways. I just think it's a very amazing thing in the abstract. Great video as ever. Many thanks.
I know exactly what you mean. Another one for me is bending a crystal to producing electricity- the piezoelectric effect. Who'd have thought it???
This was one of the best videos I’ve seen yet explaining geothermal systems. Thanks for the everyday mans explanation!
Matt - really great video. I appreciate the research you do on these subjects.
Also have a look at the Alberta company Eavor, which wants to avoid the fracturing problem by having the drill holes connect to one another. They drill down in one place, bend by 90 degrees, and meet another well a mile away. The water is sent around a closed loop - down one well, up the other into a generator and then back across to the first well. There can be many horizontal legs to increase the surface area. They've tested it in Alberta and are now working on it in Germany.
Came here to talk about this. Weird that the most Conservative, Yee Haw, pseudo-Texas, province we have is at the forefront of this technology.
Impartial, thorough, easy to understand and brief. Thank you, Matt.
Dandelion is a geothermal company I've been following. Their Prime objective is heating and cooling for homes what is a fantastic way for people to get off fossil fuels like natural gas propane and heating oil and use the heat in the ground instead
I've been looking into them. Interesting company.
I would not mind having my home heat and cool geothermally. Living in Alabama means getting my electricity from geothermal power is right now out of the question.
My relatives in western Pennsylvania heat their homes with geothermal. It was expensive to install their systems, but they now heat their homes for almost nothing. They love it.
It doesn't work well in colder climates. You have to supplement the geo with another heat source.
@@raullasvegas No, it works just fine with no other source. My nephew has four wells. It heats the house and a separate large garage (4 bay). There is no other heat source like a furnace in the house.
Can you make something about Kenya?It's on the Rift valley which is very active for Geothermal with over 10 GW
Great video. Between geothermal, hydro, solar, wind, etc. it seems that we are almost spoiled for choice when it comes to renewable energy sources.
I think wind and solar depends to much on weather. Hydro too If you consider bodies of water drying up such as the Colorado river. As long as the earth has a core geothermal will be an option.
Love your research, production, and information.
It's usually best to grab the low-hanging fruit first. For geothermal, that is probably ground source heat pumps. Suggestion: Make another video on that.
Not really the same as geothermal, but definitely a good idea.
Ronald,
heat pumps are not geothermal!
Heat pumps use the heat generated by compressing a refrigerant gas, and the condenser, i.e the underground pipes in a ground source heat pump purely load the compressor with the heat in the ground. Air source heat pumps are less and less effective as ambient air tempertaure drops and in so doing decreases the load on the compressor. The ground is a much bigger heat sink.
@@iareid8255 That's just a bit of semantic game-playing. It uses the heat of the ground, or its coolness. I think that can rightly be called geothermal. You could say that it's better, because more descriptive, to call it a ground source heat pump, and in fact as I think of it I would probably agree. But I don't think the term is used is actually wrong.
the thing is the more people that use it per /km^2 the less effective shallow residential projects are
@@woltews I suppose there must be some of that effect in principle; but can you tell me, in quantitative terms, how much that matters as a function of density?
I had an idea once to improve geothermal well drilling by using something I call a "Cavitation Vortex Drill." The idea is that when water moves across a boundary at high enough speeds, the pressure will drop enough for it to go from liquid to gas. The resulting bubbles then collapse, creating a shock-wave strong enough to damage rock or even metal. I figured if this phenomenon was strong enough to dig giant potholes in the Channeled Scablands of eastern Washington, it could dig deep into the earth's crust to where the heat is.
Normally the cavitation would destroy the drill nozzle in addition to the rock around it, but by making the water jet spin in a vortex, centrifugal force pushes the water against the sides of the hole, where it would also be moving fastest, and away from the nozzle at the center, where it would be moving slowest and causing less damage.
It would also be harder for cavitation bubbles to form at great depths due to the hydrostatic pressure, but this would be offset by the increasing temperature, and could be compensated by increasing the pump pressure, water temperature, or by the addition of abrasive particles in the pumping fluid.
My hope was that such a drill would make it less expensive to make deep boreholes, as the drill-head would not need to be replaced, nor would the drill shaft have to be rotated or oscillated, dispensing with complex drilling rigs; a long hose and a pump should do for the most part. And at certain temperatures, water will turn to steam no matter the pressure, so you could dig a very deep hole anywhere on earth and attach a steam generator for power. This would also remove the need to break up the surrounding rock (which is only to increase surface area for heat transfer at lower relative temperatures, as I understand it), and thus the additional risk of earthquakes.
Great video!
It seems to be a great energy source but it also seems to be something that won't be economically viable to every country, or everywhere within a country. The places that already explore this energy source are the places where it is more readily available, meaning places that already have a thermal source near the surface, or at least not too deep down.
Love this podcast. Matt is so informative.
Awesome video. Thank you! It's great to see geothermal getting more attention.
There are more disadvantages that were not mentioned. We have a new geothermal plant that will have to be closed down because the amount of greenhouse gases released with the steam are more that a gas plant. So worse than hydrocarbons. See NZ Herald report this week.
Next all our plants are running down in temperature each year. This is because the thermal conductivity of rock is too low to sustain the heat flow. You can consider geothermal energy a nonrenewable resource. This will be very significant for closed loop systems which have a small surface area.
I think the figures for potential generation are unrealistic, as is shown by the low investment.
If you asked some geothermal engineers instead of geologists you might get better advice with people who have more expertise in thermodynamics.
That's because most objections, and the ones you mentioned, have already been surpassed with newer tech and drill approaches.
@@asnark7115 hah - these are state of the art, brand new plants. Drilling the holes is not the problem, it is thermodynamics and the specific heat of rock. Drilling in hard rock means that you have a very small surface area and even smaller volume of rock to extract the heat. It is the power flow that matters more than the temperature. That is why all geothermal plants tap into very large natural reservoirs of porous rock filled with superheated water. Just hot water is low grade heat unsuitable for generating power. you need a huge flow of heat energy to get a small amount of net energy because for a start there is a theoretical limit of 50% that you can extract, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnot_cycle and there are a lot of parasitic processes such as re-injection that take half of the half.
Love your channel!! We installed 6 geothermal wells in our yard about 18 months ago. The effect has been to significantly lower heating and cooling costs, reduce hot water costs by 70%, and flatten summer and winter electricity demand (lessen the peaks). Our goal is to continue to drive down energy consumption this year and then be able to better match our demand to a roof top solar system.
you tapped into geo Source but apparently you you tapped out on what geothermal is ... It taps into the heat from the earth core Did you know it is like 2000 degree centigrade. Wow you must be thinking you have a 30000 foot deep well
@@stevepailet8258 Our wells are only 195 feet deep … so not the same but still considered geothermal. We are using the earth to exchange heating and cooling (depending on time of the year) to efficiently heat and cool our house with the side benefit of about 70% of the hot water usage for 7 people. The ROI for us is about 5 years and we needed a new HVAC system anyway … bonus. I highly recommend residential geothermal systems.
@@ericklingele661 hence why it is considered geo Source. Seems like it is nomenclature that is a silly change by the industry to me.. All moving heat into and out of the ground
@@stevepailet8258 can you give examples of sources where the definition is different...i searched everywhere and i cant find your made up word of "geo Source." Eric is correct and you have the incorrect definition of geothermal according to all sources i.e. wiki, dictionary, all science definitions...geothermal includes the "home" definition that Eric mentions.
@@HomeAloneGaming1 geo source referrers to heat from the earth within 20 foot to 500 foot of the ground that you would walk on. It is the same as ground source. Geo Thermal is used with pulling heat out of the mantle of the earth eg Steam.
Excellent presentation and discussion on a little understood topic. Thanks Matt
My friend, you do an AMAZING job on keeping me informed. Also I love your background music in all of your intros. What is the name of it?
I've heard that converting orphaned oil wells into geothermal installations is a great way to deal with these installations, do you know more about it?
Not trying to rain on the parade but geothermal only makes sense to the masses in a few locations. Those places should absolutely capitalize on it. For the rest of us, geothermal heat pumps is about it. Which I'm for.
Yes, i also believe that geothermal heat pumps are a necessary step in slowing climate change. If we can all heat our houses will geothermal heat, then we don't need to use as much electricity or natural gas.
The startup you mentioned sound like they are using heat exchangers to capture the heat; and transfer it to lower boiling point liquids. This method seems much safer then EGS and it's quiet well understood, ask any owner of a heat exchanger AC/Heating unit.
Great video Matt!
Great video! What matters in cost is LCOE or cost per average watt. So $4/W geothermal 24x7 compared with $1/W solar @ 4.8Wh/day means it's $5/W-ave, more expensive than geothermal.
I had hopes for geothermal as it seems like it was popular 10 years ago, especially when solar costs hadn't come down yet. Another earthquake? Last I heard was the geothermal well near Basel, Switzerland stopped by a quake it triggered.
I've been to the Calistoga California power plant (a set of plants scattered over a hill) and is very interesting. It's been running reliably for decades with output comparable to a large nuke plant. They were running out of steam until they figured out to pump water back into the ground and now output is stable. Also interesting, wells are drilled by private companies, mostly well known oil companies, who sell steam to the generation station.
Have you noticed that it is very hard to find the price of decommissioning PV panels. I hear it is expensive.
Carl, I don't quite understand your assertion about 'What matters in cost is LCOE' (which is not the same as the cost per average watt). Please explain further.
I get what you mean that if solar is $1/W solar @ 4.8Wh/day, but I don't see how that equals $5/W on average - it seems you are ignoring the other 19.2 hours of a 24 hour day. Even if you aren't ignoring those hours, the cost of $1/W seems very low for (presumably including) storage when it is dark.
If you aren't including storage in price, then the average during a 24 hour day does include the price during darkness, which seems a very problematic price for solar.
It seems to me that in general, the 'LCOE' for solar is really the 'LCOE-when-sun-is-shining', not a comparable LCOE to the LCOEs of hydro, nuclear, geothermal, coal, natural gas.
@@factnotfiction5915 Correct, LCOE is not $/ave-watt, I was trying to be less wordy in the intro sentences. To compute LCOE you start with amortized capital cost divided by the kWh/year, then add operations and maintenance (I didn't try to compare). We can use average watt to compare intermittent sources. I chose 4.8 to make a nice number, but is valid in some parts of the US and Europe. The geothermal usually runs at constant output, so $4/w capital produces. 24Wh/day. The $1/w solar might produce 4.8Wh/day. 24h/4.8Wh=5/W the average over a day. (5W solar * 4.8h/day = 24Wh/day) Sorry, bad wording. A 5W rated panel produces 24Wh/day or 1W average for areas with 4.8h/day rated production from the NREL maps at Washington, DC.
The point was that the capital cost of $4/W geothermal is comparable to $1/W solar in $/Wh/day, so not overly expensive.
Correct, solar or geothermal $/W doesn't include batteries to match supply and demand, which matters for delivered LCOE. With solar you need to store for evening and night, for geothermal you need to store excess night generation for day and evening.
There is pretty much nobody living near the Calistoga geothermal site. But a geothermal plant at Mammoth Lakes could use waste heat for central heating of the town.
There is a pilot project going on in Slovenia where they are trying to use disused gas wells by inserting a heatpipes into them. It is the "same" heatpipe technology that is used in CPU coolers. So no ground breaking.
No, not the same type of heatpipe. The one on your CPU uses vapor. Vapor is way to inefficient over long distances (this is why you pressurize water in heat exchangers and only let it boils right before it enters the turbines).
Oh, yes there is steam heating in NY. But that's 19th century technology and modern systems use warm (unpressurized) water.
Ground water thermal source is very efficient for homeowners in many locations where well water can be used for a transfer medium for heat pumps. It can also be used for drinking water. May times the temperature of the water is good for heating as it is likely much warmer than the air temperature and in the summer is much cooler than the air temperature. The cost to drill a 200-300 foot well is not too expensive in many parts of the USA.
Great info Matt. Thanks for sharing. 👍
I wonder how deep you’d have to drill to find heat in Florida. Our “hot springs” reach the surface at ~72°F. No clue how to get through the aquifer.
It's always a question about how much. Geothermal is NOT a very sustainable form or energy. Heat moves through the earth crust at a fairly low "speed" (Watts/m2). You need to be lucky to find a place that contains enough heat in a large enough volume of rock. A little thermal spring that. It gives you a a few litres of water/s. Try to pump more water out and you will quickly find (most of the time) that a) there is not much water or b) it get cold pretty quickly.
To scale you need to either a) Lucky that there is enough permeable rock to sustain high rate of water flow without cooling down. or b) Make your own (which is expensive, involves fracking).
So in short. A source of geothermal energy usually turns out to be "too small" or to cool down too fast to economical. This is the key problem he overlooks in the presentation. Geothermal is nice where it works. But is does not scale.
@@michaelrenper796 8:40
This eliminates the underground water source entirely. The rock could be as dry as a desert and it would still work.
Not saying it's perfect, but it's a step in the right direction.
"geothermal" power will always have the problem that it's not truly direct geothermal, it's always STORED geothermal energy. It takes millions of years for radioactive decay to heat subsurface rock evenly and to high temperature, and because rock is a poor conductor of heat, when a power plant starts extracting thermal energy from a given subsurface reservoir, the temperature drops RAPIDLY and takes geologic timescales to recover. Meaning a power plant using this energy source has a perpetually declining output throughout its entire life starting the day it turns on. You can see this clearly in any plot of power production over time for The Geysers in California. It peaked in terms of power output in 1990 and is continually falling to the point that it now only produces as much power as it did in 1980.
Yeah let's power our civilization by literally trying to freeze the mantle solid. Sounds like a great idea.
I'm ok with oil, just do it clean. I'm ok with nuclear, just drop the radiation. All of this is doable. We can do it today. Add solar and wind, even wave energy and that's it. We can only do so much. Shoving 300 million people back into the stone age isn't an option. We just need to think smarter without destroying jobs. You know we can do this.
@mark traver you are indeed taking away more than is lost *on non-geologic timescales*, hence the cooling of the rock and constant declining productivity of a site.
@mark traver You obviously do not have a very good grasp on the physics here because none of your points are even remotely relevant to the problem I stated. spend more time reading about the basics of thermodynamics and less time using caps lock.
@mark traver
The steam turbines that extract energy from geothermal heat are only 10% to 17% efficient. And the spirit of the age trends toward drawing down the reservoirs harder to maximize electrical production, dropping the steam pressure and temperature and efficiency even harder. I think it might be economical to tap the Yellowstone Caldera to freeze it and prevent it from erupting.
Very appreciat your work, keep doing
The idea of geo thermal is energy that I find very appealing. interestingly I also find that there are a great number of seismic events that happen at these locations on a regular cycle
Nuclear: "I can power the Earth"
Geothermal: "pff, I can shake the Earth"
ok
Technically geothermal is nuclear energy, around 50% of the heat from the earth's core comes from the natural radioactive decay of elements like uranium and thorium.
Nuclear is where it's at. Not all nuclear deals with radiation.
Geothermal looks promising, but for a max. 10% total of added capacity, it's not much. Wind will give us: ~30% and Solar: 60% total capacity, both w/ battery back-up. I'm all for it if/when we can eliminate ALL fossil fuels.
Well, if solar is 60, wind is 30, geothermal is 10? Problem solved. Then there's hydro. Wave technology. Reduction in usage. Mass transportation...
For residential use the geothermal "breakthrough" will be in vertical well drilling. It's expensive.
In large housing developments a driller could be contracted to put wells within the footprint of the homes. Although not electricity but heating and air-conditioning can be taken care of.
I truely appreciate this idea for homes condos modern building in all of BC testing.
I think you focused mostly on the geothermal energy model of Iceland, which those systems require specific geographical rock structures to avoid the issue you were talking about at the end of your video. It also requires excessive heat from areas that are nearly volcanic or deep wells.
However you completely ignored geothermal energy systems that are based solely on seasonal temperature variations and minimal ground temperature changes over the year. There are some systems that go no further than a few feet underground that are used for both heating and air conditioning for residential housing. This form has been easier to prove its worth on an individual scale. Unsure of it's capability to generate electricity, but as a replacement for heating and cooling it has shown good results.
Loving this renewable energy series, Matt. Have you looked into Dandelion at all?
What the music video
@@philipmitchelmore7293 he meant the startup that's advocating for geothermal energy
I actually have been!
@@UndecidedMF Cool! Their tech and business model is really interesting. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on them
@@philipmitchelmore7293 ganja by henry ollson
To address the situation where you accidentally activate a dormant fault... Can this be discovered by monitoring the amount of fluid "mysteriously" lost? It seems the rate of loss of heating medium would correspond with the increase of earthquake risk
What about the trinary systems where the middle loop compresses the gas thereby driving the heat into a smaller volume raising the temperature? This way a much shallower well in almost any area could be the source of heat.
Just a thought, use old fracking wells and use them as geothermal.
Might be good for 10 homes. I'd rather have the oil from them to be honest. Better than paying other countries. Plus we can control it here. We have zero control if we get it overseas.
In the US, the fracked oil wells are a long way from where people live and solar at $.02 a KWH is much cheaper. The fracked gas wells in the east are colder wells. Not thermal.
One of the key requirement of Geothermal wells is high temperature, high enough to make the project viable. AS far as I know, fracked wells r usually shallow, i.e. temperature is not that high, so my guess is most wells wouldn't be suitable for this purpose.
I was disappointed that you didn’t get into becentralized geothermal heat pumps. With Tesla’s new octovalve heat pump technology, we might be able to all heat our own homes with our own heat pumps. Can you look into this in the future?
yeah i was super excited about geothermal a bit ago but came to the conclusion that it is insufficient as an electricity generating endeavour for almost all places in the world, however, it is significantly easier to use it for basic things like home heating which in a cold place would be huge
Great video and research
When I saw you had made a video on geothermal, I immediately started watching. I had watched a series on living off the grid where many of the people were building their own houses. Some of the houses had a trench dug in the ground leading to the house; they looked quite long, and there was what looked like large white PVC pipe laid horizontal down in the trench. Somehow cooled air went through the pipe into the house, circulated, and was returned underground. I did not see any type of coolant used. Apparently this can also help heating in the winter. Do you know what this is called? I found it very interesting and thought that it was probably geothermal. After watching this, it obviously isn't the same thing. I did enjoy this video, however. Your videos are always a bit easier for me to understand. Thanks!
You are thinking of a ground source heat pump. Most of the the heat extracted in the winter is stored in the ground from the summer- very little is geothermal heat from deep in the ground.
@@LVBRIP Thank you so much! I just watched a video and that looks pretty similar to what they were doing. No information was ever given about the pipe being buried, so it was confusing. I really appreciate your answer. I was really confused and couldn't understand why if it worked everyone didn't use it. Most of the homes were smaller and also had solar. Cool. Now I know! Mystery solved.
What about a Stirling generator for lower geothermally active sources in Arctic countries? Subarctic frost lines seem like a lot more available across tundra than finding perfect locations
QNergy Stirling Engines is a nice company that makes Stirling Engines. Cold vs Hot runs the engine with almost no Maintenance.
I look at this as having another tool in the tool kit. A one size fits all solution to energy generation doesn't exist. We should use what is most practical locally. This provides another option where wind and solar are impractical.
My thoughts exactly.
@mark traver Indeed. I live in West Texas where it is sunny and windy. Wind and solar are a no brainer, but storage is a challenge. However, wind and solar are less effective in the mountains of Colorado, but there pumped hydro is a no brainer. Each place has it's advantages and it bothers me that systems aren't designed with this in mind.
I have always been told that the piping and other stuff in geothermal power plants tended not to last due to seismic activity, acidic soils and minerals.
Awesome new video!! Love your channel
Thanks so much!!
Thank you for your video. In a few locations on Earth, geothermal energy makes great sense. But over most of the continents, the upward flow of heat is less than 0.1 W/m^2 - and that is a fundamental limit to how much heat can be extracted. In the UK the average heat flow is less than 38 mW/m^2. If you want 1 MW of thermal energy (say 0.3 MW-electrical) you need 10 km^2 for SUSTAINABLE energy generation. The rock is hot at depth and so you can do one shot generation, extracting the energy from (say) a cubic kilometre of rock. But then you need to leave it for a few years before the upward flow of heat to re-warm the block. And then there's the earthquakes. Best wishes. Michael
What if you dig to 20km depth?
@@jimj2683 The rock gets hotter, but the heat flow is the same.
However the deepest hole ever drilled (iirc) was 11 km deep….
@@michaeldepodesta001 Yeah, I read that the main reason for why we don't use geothermal everywhere is because we don't have the tech to dig deep enough yet. If that happens (with millimeter-wave tech etc) and they could get to 20km, that would be awesome.
Geothermal is good, just build it dammit we'll sit here arguing all decade and get absolutely nothing done.
start investing in it then
@@LeReVaQ big brain take
Hmmm, some things looks strangely familiar. Very well done Matt, vey good explanation of the advantages and certainly the many challenges of geothermal research and EGS.
Thank you 🙏 AGAIN 🙏 for your excellent succinct informative and flawless work 👏👏👏👏💪💪💪
Excellent video! Sounds like a promising technology. Increases in seismicity may not be the only problems. These questions come off the top of my head, but I would be interested to hear thoughts of those more knowledgeable than I. 1) Given that geothermal heat is largely produced by the decay of 232Th, 238U, 235U, & 40K, is there an issue with surface exposure to tritium or other radioactive isotopes?; 2) Is neutron flux embrittlement of pipes, pumps, etc. an issue?; and 3) Given that the electric eddy currents in the molten outer core provide Earth’s magnetic field (magnetosphere) that protects us from the atmosphere-stripping solar winds, could removing much greater amounts of geothermal heat weaken the protective magnetosphere? Mars had a magnetosphere and atmosphere but lost them. I suspect someone will tell me that the tiny amount of heat we will take off will be inconsequential, but I am just wondering. Thanks.
Geothermal heat is 0.087 W/m2 or 0.027% of Earth's total energy budget.
That's lame.
But it’s clean and constant, which is not lame. Why can’t we just drill down like 1000 km? How hard could it be?
*starts digging a small hole in the ground with a shovel, gets tired and quits*
The deepest hole ever drilled was about 11 km. @@RyanWilliams222
Good to see this reliable and controllable energy source is not being ignored . One may even consider it as a pre heating system for other steam turbines power generation. As we move to electric cars trucks and buses we need to generate more power ,particularly after 5 PM for recharging these vehicles .
Thanks for this very informative video.
Generating electricity from geothermal energy seems inefficient. Rather, geothermal energy can be used for heating or maybe for cooling. Earth can be used as a heat reservoir of a heat pump. If we place a huge metal heat sink deep in the earth and run water through it, we can pull the energy and use it for heating. The challenge will be the size and depth of the heat sink
I support FRACKING.
In Scandinavia ground heat is becoming the number one source to heat houses in the countryside. We switched last year from using 3000 litres of oil per year to ground heat with inverter pump that acquires the heat from the surrounding fields at 1.5 depth x 800 m of pipe
A ground source heat pump is a great idea, but it does not use geothermal energy. Although it seems strange, it is actually using solar energy. On average solar energy heats every square metre on Earth by 240 watts per square metre on average over the year. By contrast the geothermal energy is just 0.1 watts per square metre.
awesome video!
lol green fracking..... I cannot wait for the narrative justifying that 😂🤣
Right..... exploits the earth for heat instead of oil, still heating the environment, even with a closed loop system your still dumping delta T into the atmosphere and environment.
I've watched this video repeatedly and think it's very good. Living in the South West of Germany I know thereis a huge potential source of geothermal energy rightunder my feet beneath the "Rhine valley" rift. With all the downsides to the existing renewable / alternative energy sources, geothermal to me seems like one of the more promising ones, generating electrical energy that could be distributed in the existing grids...
One startup Eavor has designed a closed loop conduction system with no seismic input. They had an 18 months prototype running in Alberta and are deploying a commercial system in Germany.
That is my favorite content. Greetz from Germany :)
I live within a mile of the geysers geothermal operation in northern CA. We have earthquakes all the time. Had one not more than a couple of hours ago. They're small however and you get used to it.
Interesting video Matt & I agree that the potential of Geothermal Energy has a very long way to go.
I saw a video about home building. It was about a housing development that did a community wide geothermal heating system. They were not making steam to turn turbines, but instead of each house having a geothermal loop or well in its yard, they buried the loop under the streets and there was a common building that ran the pumps. The houses hooked up to the loop like any other utility. Cost wise, it’s more efficient than each house having its own loop. And since they’re not going that deep, costs are less. And there’s no worry that they won’t hit hot rock- they just need to go about 10 feet down where there is a constant temperature. And I think this can be used for cooling in the summer. And since they’re not drilling deep and injecting water into the crust, it won’t trigger earthquakes.
? Drake Landing Solar Community, Okotoks, Alberta?
@@allancook1890 ruclips.net/video/Uy0SEG36bEM/видео.html
Austin TX
@@billvojtech5686 Similar, more cooling than heating. Pretty good idea for new builds.
Great job 👏
This is an informative and well researched look at geothermal energy. The thing that strikes me about all the "downsides" to this technology, is that many people don't seem to way those against all the negatives that come with wind, solar, oil, gas, nuclear, etc. I don't think there is one simple solution, but we need to start moving faster to develop and implement these less destructive energy sources. Better is better.
Any idea how much space you need for a small plant? (very small) I have a 15 acre small farm doing nothing. It's next to a quarry so housing is out. I thought of some sort of energy capture and storage but maybe that modular geo-thermal he mentioned is an option? Since it's next to a quarry drilling will probably be a deal killer. I'm just curious.
How deep do you have to go to get to 180 deg f.? You should be able to google it.
If we can dig that far down what is stopping the use of thermoelectric generators with the temperature difference between the surface and deep below?
I like your videos a lot!
I always like your topics always on point. Kenya too has geothermal energy
Matt,
Can you do a video on the viability of an all-renewables future? Solar, wind, geothermal (including geothermal heat pumps, where you basically cycle liquid in pipes in the ground to either absorb the heat from the ground for heating or absorb the cooler temperature from the ground if you need AC), tidal, whatever else it is I'm forgetting?
Also...a separate video on home wind generation for someone who doesn't live on a farm or in the middle of nowhere (like the average American suburban home).
What's the cost of maintenance and deployment duration compared to more prevalent renewable sources for energy?
What about home heating and cooling with warm (not hot) water pumped to the home and returned. Heat pumps would transfer the heat from /to the water. Im thinking of towns adjacent to underground mines or wells drilled for the purpose.
When I visit my best friend in Nevada. We drive by a Geothermal power plant. You can hardly tell there is a generating plant there.
Are there any cases where the generator is located deep underground, instead of bringing water/steam up to the surface?
How deep would you have to drill to simply power one household? Let's say up to 20kW? Can i buy a small unit to put in my backyard? Or is it more complicated then that?
Installing geothermal for energy (electricity) generation on a homeowner scale analogous to putting PV solar panels on your roof is not really feasible. Geothermal heat exchange for heating/cooling an individual home is very much in play and would significantly reduce the energy load (electricity and/or gas/oil) required to heat/cool which is a huge portion of current energy consumption. As others have already mentioned, companies like Dandelion (dandelionenergy.com/) are moving the tech forward.
With geo thermal would a Stirling engine not be any good?
An idea but first I have to comment and say that in Sweden we use a lot of geo-thermal energy as a source of heating, for housing. It's very, very common. Either as geothermal or "air"-thermal, that is to extract heat from the air and use it for heating the home.
To the idea. I know there are companies that use concentrated solar combined with sterling engine to create electricity.
Shouldn't it be possible to: use geothermal energy as energy to fuel a sterling engine? Either by using heat from the ground directly, or by using the sun during the day and use the geo part as a store of heat. That way it should be possible to run the energy plant even during the night.
I'm not an engineer but an economist and thus the most important question is not if it's possible but is it cost efficient. Thus I guess the the answer to my question is yes but it's not efficient. Then to my follow up question, what are the downsides to a sterling engine? Somehow I cant help but think that it's the missing link between converting any heat/cold into electricity.
Matt, efficacy for small-35k- community to use parks and golf course as location for geothermal energy generation?
Can you gather energy thru tectonic plates shiftin, so the vibrations?
Another risk is the change in the subsurface. The source of heat, magma, could move. The movement would most likely be towards the surface where the sophisticated plants convert heat to electricity.
would it be cheaper to put these larger plants offshore to only have to drill less but still be deeper into hotter rock?
Good job.... in relation to the high price energy we have to invest more in geothermal energy technology ...
You can also use geothermal energy as a way to heat a building. This is very common in Sweden. So there are uses for it even if the technology can't generate electricity
What are the climate effects of releasing this energy to the atmosphere vs keeping it trapped under ground? Just curious.
On a global level the energy we release is way too small to change temperature in the environment. The worst case is New York city: 10000/km^2. 100m^2 per person. A person may consume 30KWH or 0.3KWH per m^2 - That compares to ~4-6kwH arriving from the Sun even in deepest winter.
So in winter the most densely populated place in the world is a bit warmer indeed. Everywhere else - no impact.