7 ms·

I don't know why this isn't done more in the US. At least with thermal water, my understanding is that you don't need huge temperature differentials and this is

I don't know why this isn't done more in the US. At least with thermal water, my understanding is that you don't need huge temperature differentials and this is cost effective on a pretty small scale.

rbanffy 5y ago
I bet you can get some huge differentials next to volcanos or Yellowstone. You'll need to fight conservationists (understandably) but clean energy is clean energy. And every gigajoule you take from Yellowstone is one less gigajoule for the next supervolcano eruption.
- _Microft 5y ago
  I would really like to see a project like this actually attempted. Protests against it would be very understandable because of the impact of several large power plants. I think the biggest issue might be that they also need to release the waste heat somehow. That would mean water consumption and cooling towers with steam clouds that might be visible from far away.
  - chrisco255 5y ago
    Please don't. Yellowstone is a pristine nature reserve. There's many other areas in nearby Idaho you probably could tap into similar thermal energy without ruining the first National Park. Yellowstone is also in one of the least densely populated areas in the country so it's very difficult to transport without massive energy loss by resistance.
    - _Microft 5y ago
      I absolutely understand your concerns. There are approximately twenty supervolcanoes around the world, so I wouldn't worry to much. There is an almost supervulcano in Italy that is also much closer to where power is needed [0]. Remoteness is not that much of a problem though: (ultra) high-voltage direct-current ("(U)HVDC") power lines have losses in the order of 3% per 1000km (that's 620mi) which is very acceptable. China has power lines that move the power equivalent of several nuclear power plants over thousands of kilometers for example. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phlegraean_Fields https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phlegraean_Fields [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current
      - rbanffy 5y ago
        > There is an almost supervulcano in Italy And the Mediterranean can provide a lot of water for cooling at the same time the extra heat can easily be used for desalination.
      - andrewflnr 5y ago
        Yellowstone is not just "a supervolcano", as mentioned it's a natural preserve and generally beautiful place. I'm pretty sure there are enough other geologically active sites closer to populations and with less history that there's no reason to bother with Yellowstone
        _Microft 5y ago
        As I already said, I absolutely understand the concerns. That does not mean that it might not become inevitable to do something about it one day. In the long run, the choice seem to be that it either blows up right away (in the geologically-near future) or to extract enough energy to at least delay the disaster. Edit, as reply to child comment: here is the NASA report that concludes that it is possible to cool supervolcanoes: https://scienceandtechnology.jpl.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/documents/DefendingCivilizationFromSupervolcanos20151015.pdf https://scienceandtechnology.jpl.nasa.gov/sites/default/file...
        chrisco255 5y ago
        It's naive to believe that you can extract enough energy from the earth's core to prevent supervolcanic eruptions.
        sdenton4 5y ago
        Well, it's also native to believe that we could dunno enough CO2 into the atmosphere to affect global mean temperature, yet here we are. Multiply any activity by a non trivial fraction of humanity and you get non trivial side effects.
        grkvlt 5y ago
    - maxerickson 5y ago
      High voltage transmission losses are a few percent. We don't need to make a mess in Yellowstone, but 'massive energy loss by resistance' is just wrong.
    - dredmorbius 5y ago
      For accuracy's sake: resistance losses in long-distance high-voltage AC or DC transmission are actually quite low. On the order of 6%. The majority of generating losses (about 60% of input thermal energy) is due to Carnot efficiency losses, not transmission inefficiencies. There's also some loss in transformers (ramping voltages up or down), and rectifiers (converting AC to DC and vice versa). But the biggest losses are in going from thermal to mechanical energy itself.
      - chrisco255 5y ago
        There have to be some additional tradeoffs with distance? What city would you hope to power with energy from Yellowstone? Seattle? Denver? What would be the realistic costs of getting energy to those places? How much infrastructure build out would be needed? Would the tradeoffs be clearly worth it?
        dredmorbius 5y ago
        Much of the central US lies within easy reach. Keep in mind that the same general region is a major coal-producing zone presently, and much of that coal is burned locally for generation: it's cheaper to move the electricity than the coal used to generate it. This also means that a substantial amount of the transmission infrastructure is already in place.
    - LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  > And every gigajoule you take from Yellowstone is one less gigajoule for the next supervolcano eruption.' What if it disturbs whatever equilibrium the caldera's maintained and causes it to erupt sooner than it would have? This is a genuine question, I know next to nothing about this.
  - inglor_cz 5y ago
    Yeah, this sounds to me like the "they delved too deep" story of dwarves in Moria. We are not good enough in vulcanology yet to tickle the sleeping Yellowstone giant.
    - rbanffy 5y ago
      We’ll never know unless we do more research. I don’t think we can make a dent in the amount of energy under Yellowstone either way - if it’s going to blow, it will and there’s nothing we can do. If we could take enough energy out of Yellowstone to make it less supervolcanic, we’d have a hard problem dealing with whatever waste heat would be left after consuming that much energy.
      - _Microft 5y ago
        The excess power, that is the power that is not reaching the surface by normal processes and that keeps heating up the volcano seems to be in the order of a few gigawatts. This is absolutely possible with cooling measures like they are used for large power plants.
        rbanffy 5y ago
        This would be to keep temperatures constant. If we want it to be less of an existential threat to humanity, we should cool it down.
      - robbedpeter 5y ago
        This is energy that would be dispersed at the surface anyway, isn't it?
- anonporridge 5y ago
  The problem is that there are no large population centers near Yellowstone. Maybe you could reach Salt Lake City or Denver without prohibitive transmission line inefficiency? Maybe increasing automation means that we can build more factories and data centers near these sources of massive renewable energy potential without struggling to convince workers to live in these remote locations (although that might not be a huge challenge for a beautiful place like Yellowstone).
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    High-capacity long-distance electrical transmission is actually both cheap and efficient, relative to many other energy options. It's far less expensive to build one high-capacity line than many low-capacity lines (e.g., serving wind farms or solar farms). Geothermal has the added benefit that it's dispatchable power. It can be extracted on demand, when the need arises. As a complement to wind and solar, it's actually a great fit.
    - liketochill 5y ago
      If you have a plant that can make 100 MW continuously then that is what you do with it. Unless someone is going to pay you to turn it off, you keep it running.
      - dredmorbius 5y ago
        Depends on if you're considering the generator perspective or the grid perspective. The grid doesn't simply want megawatts. It wants a balance of supply and demand, and a minimisation of outages. Wind and solar cannot be spun up on demand. Hydro can be, and in general is (much lower-capacity hydro is grid smoothing). Hydro will even suck capacity off the grid where possible (pumped storage). Geo which can load-match, disable when grid is oversupplied, and fill in for cloudy & windless days, makes all kinds of sense at the grid level.
        rbanffy 5y ago
- simonebrunozzi 5y ago
  That would still be a drop in the ocean. I suspect the amount of energy involved in a volcano eruption can't possibly be compared to the energy you extract as geothermal.
techbio 5y ago
It's been under research in Hawaii for decades.
ph0rque 5y ago
It's coming: https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/10/21/21515461/renewable-energy-geothermal-egs-ags-supercritical https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/10/21/215154...
FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
The "irony" here is that it's frackers who are going to drill the geothermal wells. If they start seeing clearly, they'll realize that green energy could mean a juicy paycheck.
zdragnar 5y ago
It is expensive, and if you don't have a large yard, the cost goes way up as you need to install a vertical system instead of a horizontal one. Tree roots mess with the piping, and you have to be careful to not drive or set anything over it (much like a septic drain field, though not as fragile).

rbanffy 5y ago

I bet you can get some huge differentials next to volcanos or Yellowstone. You'll need to fight conservationists (understandably) but clean energy is clean energy. And every gigajoule you take from Yellowstone is one less gigajoule for the next supervolcano eruption.

_Microft 5y ago
I would really like to see a project like this actually attempted. Protests against it would be very understandable because of the impact of several large power plants. I think the biggest issue might be that they also need to release the waste heat somehow. That would mean water consumption and cooling towers with steam clouds that might be visible from far away.
- chrisco255 5y ago
  Please don't. Yellowstone is a pristine nature reserve. There's many other areas in nearby Idaho you probably could tap into similar thermal energy without ruining the first National Park. Yellowstone is also in one of the least densely populated areas in the country so it's very difficult to transport without massive energy loss by resistance.
  - _Microft 5y ago
    I absolutely understand your concerns. There are approximately twenty supervolcanoes around the world, so I wouldn't worry to much. There is an almost supervulcano in Italy that is also much closer to where power is needed [0]. Remoteness is not that much of a problem though: (ultra) high-voltage direct-current ("(U)HVDC") power lines have losses in the order of 3% per 1000km (that's 620mi) which is very acceptable. China has power lines that move the power equivalent of several nuclear power plants over thousands of kilometers for example. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phlegraean_Fields https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phlegraean_Fields [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current
    - rbanffy 5y ago
      > There is an almost supervulcano in Italy And the Mediterranean can provide a lot of water for cooling at the same time the extra heat can easily be used for desalination.
    - andrewflnr 5y ago
      Yellowstone is not just "a supervolcano", as mentioned it's a natural preserve and generally beautiful place. I'm pretty sure there are enough other geologically active sites closer to populations and with less history that there's no reason to bother with Yellowstone
      - _Microft 5y ago
        As I already said, I absolutely understand the concerns. That does not mean that it might not become inevitable to do something about it one day. In the long run, the choice seem to be that it either blows up right away (in the geologically-near future) or to extract enough energy to at least delay the disaster. Edit, as reply to child comment: here is the NASA report that concludes that it is possible to cool supervolcanoes: https://scienceandtechnology.jpl.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/documents/DefendingCivilizationFromSupervolcanos20151015.pdf https://scienceandtechnology.jpl.nasa.gov/sites/default/file...
        chrisco255 5y ago
        It's naive to believe that you can extract enough energy from the earth's core to prevent supervolcanic eruptions.
        sdenton4 5y ago
        Well, it's also native to believe that we could dunno enough CO2 into the atmosphere to affect global mean temperature, yet here we are. Multiply any activity by a non trivial fraction of humanity and you get non trivial side effects.
      - grkvlt 5y ago
  - maxerickson 5y ago
    High voltage transmission losses are a few percent. We don't need to make a mess in Yellowstone, but 'massive energy loss by resistance' is just wrong.
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    For accuracy's sake: resistance losses in long-distance high-voltage AC or DC transmission are actually quite low. On the order of 6%. The majority of generating losses (about 60% of input thermal energy) is due to Carnot efficiency losses, not transmission inefficiencies. There's also some loss in transformers (ramping voltages up or down), and rectifiers (converting AC to DC and vice versa). But the biggest losses are in going from thermal to mechanical energy itself.
    - chrisco255 5y ago
      There have to be some additional tradeoffs with distance? What city would you hope to power with energy from Yellowstone? Seattle? Denver? What would be the realistic costs of getting energy to those places? How much infrastructure build out would be needed? Would the tradeoffs be clearly worth it?
      - dredmorbius 5y ago
        Much of the central US lies within easy reach. Keep in mind that the same general region is a major coal-producing zone presently, and much of that coal is burned locally for generation: it's cheaper to move the electricity than the coal used to generate it. This also means that a substantial amount of the transmission infrastructure is already in place.
  - LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current
heavyset_go 5y ago
> And every gigajoule you take from Yellowstone is one less gigajoule for the next supervolcano eruption.' What if it disturbs whatever equilibrium the caldera's maintained and causes it to erupt sooner than it would have? This is a genuine question, I know next to nothing about this.
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  Yeah, this sounds to me like the "they delved too deep" story of dwarves in Moria. We are not good enough in vulcanology yet to tickle the sleeping Yellowstone giant.
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    We’ll never know unless we do more research. I don’t think we can make a dent in the amount of energy under Yellowstone either way - if it’s going to blow, it will and there’s nothing we can do. If we could take enough energy out of Yellowstone to make it less supervolcanic, we’d have a hard problem dealing with whatever waste heat would be left after consuming that much energy.
    - _Microft 5y ago
      The excess power, that is the power that is not reaching the surface by normal processes and that keeps heating up the volcano seems to be in the order of a few gigawatts. This is absolutely possible with cooling measures like they are used for large power plants.
      - rbanffy 5y ago
        This would be to keep temperatures constant. If we want it to be less of an existential threat to humanity, we should cool it down.
    - robbedpeter 5y ago
      This is energy that would be dispersed at the surface anyway, isn't it?
anonporridge 5y ago
The problem is that there are no large population centers near Yellowstone. Maybe you could reach Salt Lake City or Denver without prohibitive transmission line inefficiency? Maybe increasing automation means that we can build more factories and data centers near these sources of massive renewable energy potential without struggling to convince workers to live in these remote locations (although that might not be a huge challenge for a beautiful place like Yellowstone).
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  High-capacity long-distance electrical transmission is actually both cheap and efficient, relative to many other energy options. It's far less expensive to build one high-capacity line than many low-capacity lines (e.g., serving wind farms or solar farms). Geothermal has the added benefit that it's dispatchable power. It can be extracted on demand, when the need arises. As a complement to wind and solar, it's actually a great fit.
  - liketochill 5y ago
    If you have a plant that can make 100 MW continuously then that is what you do with it. Unless someone is going to pay you to turn it off, you keep it running.
    - dredmorbius 5y ago
      Depends on if you're considering the generator perspective or the grid perspective. The grid doesn't simply want megawatts. It wants a balance of supply and demand, and a minimisation of outages. Wind and solar cannot be spun up on demand. Hydro can be, and in general is (much lower-capacity hydro is grid smoothing). Hydro will even suck capacity off the grid where possible (pumped storage). Geo which can load-match, disable when grid is oversupplied, and fill in for cloudy & windless days, makes all kinds of sense at the grid level.
      - rbanffy 5y ago
simonebrunozzi 5y ago
That would still be a drop in the ocean. I suspect the amount of energy involved in a volcano eruption can't possibly be compared to the energy you extract as geothermal.

techbio 5y ago

It's been under research in Hawaii for decades.

ph0rque 5y ago

It's coming: https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/10/21/21515461/renewable-energy-geothermal-egs-ags-supercritical https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/10/21/215154...

FooBarBizBazz 5y ago

The "irony" here is that it's frackers who are going to drill the geothermal wells. If they start seeing clearly, they'll realize that green energy could mean a juicy paycheck.

zdragnar 5y ago

It is expensive, and if you don't have a large yard, the cost goes way up as you need to install a vertical system instead of a horizontal one. Tree roots mess with the piping, and you have to be careful to not drive or set anything over it (much like a septic drain field, though not as fragile).