Texas Power Podcast: Fervo Energy CEO Tim Latimer discusses the resurgence of geothermal energy
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- Опубликовано: 16 сен 2024
- Tim Latimer was working as a drilling engineer in South Texas when he couldn't shake a newfound curiosity.
Latimer was new to the oil and gas industry, and in 2012, the industry was at the height of the shale revolution. He was tasked with navigating the challenges created by high drilling temperatures in the Eagle Ford Shale region.
As he did more research Latimer discovered the world of geothermal energy. Fast forward a decade later and his company, Fervo Energy, is leading the revival of what Latimer calls a forgotten renewable.
Latimer joined the Texas Power Podcast from Renewable Energy World to discuss his background, geothermal's resurgence, and the impact of the Inflation Reduction Act on the industry.
Thanks for the presentation. The potential of geothermal is tremendous. One of the weaknesses of renewables is intermittency and geothermal has the potential of providing base load. There is a concept called "energy islands". One not often mentioned energy island efforts are military facilities. They certainly have the money for it.
On on your Milford rig now. Amazing project. I am grateful for the chance to learn about new technologies that exist in my field.
This is awesome!
A 5 MW geothermal power plant in Las Vegas. Makes me wonder why you are thinking so small?
Consider the pair of 400 MW steam turbines at Huntington Beach CA generation station, where they need operators to run the plant 24/7- 365. So this requires a certain minimum staff to run the steam power plant. Your 5 MW steam plant will also require a minimum number of operators too, and not many less than the pair of 400 MW turbines in Huntington Beach.
So my guess - is labor cost going to exceed the $65 per MW of power that you produce? Now if you where producing 50 MW I would not brig this up. California has about 975 MW of geothermal power over many different power plants. So their labor cost is also significant, as they have dozens of employees working in all of these plants, not just a dozen that would be used in one central power plant such as the mentioned HB plant.
Where I can see a huge advantage, even with a small 5 MW system would be to use that waste heat to manufacture something that needs lots of 200F hot water, or to run a greenhouse, or some other thing. So make beer with all that hot water? Yes beer production needs a lot of hot water.
Now if you start to look for a employee in a typical PV solar farm at 5 MW size, you will have to wait for months to see one show up to do some maintenance. So much less labor costs.
Wind farms, you might see employees there for maintenance several days per year, depending on how many wind turbines they have. But each wind turbine normally will not see more than 3 employee X 8 hours per year? As a guess.
Steam turbines require a person to be there, State Law!
Environmental red tape, it tapes 7-20 years to get consent per drill site thanks NEPA Act that allows eco terrorist to sue them.
What is the cost of producing electricity per unit
Seems convenient he doesn’t mention nuclear