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Geothermal power always sounds like a great idea. And it used to be one. But nowadays, anything that needs a steam turbine is going to be more costly to operat
by ncmncm 4y ago
Geothermal power always sounds like a great idea. And it used to be one.
But nowadays, anything that needs a steam turbine is going to be more costly to operate than wind or solar + cheap storage, because steam turbines need expensive periodic maintenance.
(Geothermal heating, or for extra credit heating and cooling, remains viable.)
If you want to rescue geothermal power generation, you need to put in the engineering work to make a viable alternative to the steam turbine, one that needs a lot less, or anyway a lot cheaper, maintenance. Presumably it is still a turbine, but designed for a different working fluid. Some have suggested supercritical CO2 for this role.
- osigurdson 4y agoGiven that virtually every natural gas fired electrical generation facility has a steam turbine, I’m not sure that you are correct (though you may be). It seems to me the costs would be high because doing anything deep underground is expensive.
- bryanlarsen 4y agoThe steam turbine is secondary in a combined cycle gas turbine rather than primary as in coal, nuclear, geo, et cetera. That might be the difference.
- empraptor 4y agoI don't know what the current state of thermophotovoltaics are but maybe that's one way to go about it. Or maybe the temps are too low for that. Not sure. https://www.science.org/content/article/thermal-batteries-could-efficiently-store-wind-and-solar-power-renewable-grid https://www.science.org/content/article/thermal-batteries-co... UPDATE: Papers about geothermal source temperatures refer to tempratures up to 180°C. The thermal battery article above refer to TPV setups that use 1400°C source and efforts are being made to push temps to 2400°C for higher efficiency. https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/geothermal-source-temperature https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/geothermal-...