5 ms·

Thermoelectric sort of does consume it, I guess. They inject the water down into geysers to produce steam. My home town, Santa Rosa, California, gets most (all?

Thermoelectric sort of does consume it, I guess. They inject the water down into geysers to produce steam. My home town, Santa Rosa, California, gets most (all?) of its power from thermoelectric. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Geysers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Geysers

sbierwagen 7y ago
To be clear, when the article says "thermoelectric", they're talking about any power plant that heats up water to generate steam, which is to say, every coal, nuclear, and combined-cycle natural gas power plant in the country.
- minitoar 7y ago
  Ah...makes sense.
reissbaker 7y ago
I don't think that's consumption, though? Steam is still water, just in gaseous form, and it becomes liquid again via condensation.
- usrusr 7y ago
  I was about to post the same objection, the steam used in the turbine is in a closed cycle for all that I know. But a large amount of water is evaporated to cool the condenser in big plants that produce more waste heat than can be used by local low intensity heat consumers (district heating, greenhouses). In any case, water consumption is an incredibly weak metric if it's not somehow normalized by source and sink impact. It's irresponsible alarmism when e.g. irrigation use from a plentiful source is measured on the same scale as consumption of a non-replenishing mineral occurrence and/or water use that ends with dumping toxic liquid into a leaky artificial lake as seem with certain mining processes.
ceejayoz 7y ago
They're injecting treated sewage, which seems like a win-win. > However, since October 16, 1997, the Geysers steam field has been recharged by injection of treated sewage effluent, producing approximately 77 megawatts of capacity in 2004... The injection of wastewater to the Geysers protects local waterways and Clear Lake by diverting effluent which used to be put into surface waters, and has produced electricity without releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

sbierwagen 7y ago

To be clear, when the article says "thermoelectric", they're talking about any power plant that heats up water to generate steam, which is to say, every coal, nuclear, and combined-cycle natural gas power plant in the country.

minitoar 7y ago
Ah...makes sense.

reissbaker 7y ago

I don't think that's consumption, though? Steam is still water, just in gaseous form, and it becomes liquid again via condensation.

usrusr 7y ago
I was about to post the same objection, the steam used in the turbine is in a closed cycle for all that I know. But a large amount of water is evaporated to cool the condenser in big plants that produce more waste heat than can be used by local low intensity heat consumers (district heating, greenhouses). In any case, water consumption is an incredibly weak metric if it's not somehow normalized by source and sink impact. It's irresponsible alarmism when e.g. irrigation use from a plentiful source is measured on the same scale as consumption of a non-replenishing mineral occurrence and/or water use that ends with dumping toxic liquid into a leaky artificial lake as seem with certain mining processes.

ceejayoz 7y ago

They're injecting treated sewage, which seems like a win-win. > However, since October 16, 1997, the Geysers steam field has been recharged by injection of treated sewage effluent, producing approximately 77 megawatts of capacity in 2004... The injection of wastewater to the Geysers protects local waterways and Clear Lake by diverting effluent which used to be put into surface waters, and has produced electricity without releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.