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Make drilling cheaper. This would also help with water access. The biggest cost of small geothermal and water projects is always the drilling. Drill rig time
by iancmceachern 3y ago
Make drilling cheaper. This would also help with water access. The biggest cost of small geothermal and water projects is always the drilling. Drill rig time is always a limiting factor.
- WarOnPrivacy 3y agoYeah. We'd do 3"-6" wells at 450ft for hvac geo and it'd be 10%-30% of the project cost. I don't believe drilling has gotten cheaper in my lifetime.
- Bedon292 3y agoWe just recently got Geo HVAC, for our two units it was 800 total feet divided into 2 wells. And drilling was in the area of 25% of the total cost. 50% for the units themselves, and I guess 25% for the other parts, labor, and misc stuff. While drilling is definitely a big chunk, all of it is so much more expensive than traditional air heat pumps that even without drilling it would still be at least 50% more expensive. Double without US Federal incentives.
- echelon 3y ago> Make drilling cheaper. How?
- iancmceachern 3y agoI've been wanting to build and try something like this: https://youtu.be/3pOSzBgB8WU?si=kCyDZA0GkKMFAzNH https://youtu.be/3pOSzBgB8WU?si=kCyDZA0GkKMFAzNH Could easily be improved upon, seems workable
- defrost 3y agoFor shallow dirt holes, sure. Not so great once the pressure increases or granite|schist layer intercede.
- iancmceachern 3y agoI've been thinking one could add a water powered bit on the tip not unlike the tips they have on more traditional drill rigs. I think there is lots of room for improvement on this technique, lots of white space between this and a traditional rig.
- defrost 3y agoFor the purposes talked about in the linked article they're not really looking for new tech that lies between a traditional mining drill and a garden hose though - they're looking beyond the capabilities of traditional mining drill: Commercial drilling doesn’t usually go much deeper than seven kilometers (four miles)—for cost reasons, it’s often even less than that—and many places that might benefit from geothermal aren’t hot enough at that depth to reach the 150 °C needed to generate electricity economically. Reaching sufficient temperatures may mean going deeper, which would require new techniques and technologies that can withstand high heat and pressure.
- iancmceachern 3y agoYeah, I'm not bounding my thinking, and future plans, by this article. I was just mentioning that something I've been thinking of was similar.
- fsckboy 3y agowe can power it with free geothermal! the deeper the hole gets, the faster the drilling goes. it's power all the way down!
- dtgriscom 3y agoAgreed: how? Drilling companies have been competing on price for a hundred years; anyone who came up with a significantly cheaper drilling system would be raking in the dough until everyone else caught up.
- angiosperm 3y agoDrilling is supposed to get cheaper when it is done with microwaves instead of drill bits. But the expense of maintaining the necessary steam turbine still makes it hard for geo to compete with wind and solar. This is also a major factor in the cost of operating a nuke plant, with similar effect on competitiveness. Really big steam turbines cost less to keep than a lot of small ones, but then you generally need to build two so you have a backup when one is down for maintenance.
- Terr_ 3y agoTIL proposals to drill with microwaves [0]. In summary, a (dumb yet durable) metal waveguide+pipe stretches down, it emits microwaves to vaporize the rock face, and gas pumped down through it is released so that it exhausts back up along with the removed mass of rock-vapor/particles. > [P]roducing the supercritical steam needed requires drilling to depths of 10 to 20 km [...] rock is capable of both producing superheated steam and destroying the microchips and seals required for directional drilling. [0] https://jpt.spe.org/microwave-drilling-sounds-like-science-fiction-but-so-does-drilling-down-to-the-hottest-rock https://jpt.spe.org/microwave-drilling-sounds-like-science-f...
- LargoLasskhyfv 3y agoThat's about Quaise Energy, which have been on HN many times in the recent past. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=Quaise%20Energy&sort=byDate&type=all https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
- applied_heat 3y agoI was hopeful that all of the unused drilling capacity after the shale boom/bust would allow some of the know how and equipment to be reallocated to geothermal but the grid operators and markets are not offering the premium to firm capacity that is required for the longer lead time and increased capital requirements and increased risk in geothermal projects vs wind and solar which can be augmented with battery storage. It’s going to suck though when we hit a weeklong stretch of cloudy still weather if there isn’t enough spare capacity from other sources to compensate for the missing wind and solar.
- hunter2_ 3y ago> if there isn’t enough spare capacity from other sources to compensate for the missing wind and solar This seems like a problem Elon would gladly dabble in, pushing out a NACS firmware update or something as an emergency limiter. Maybe first responders get priority, like they do for mobile network congestion. Or dirtier power remains on cold standby for unusual peaks. This would eventually be outlawed, I imagine.
- adrianN 3y agoFor week long storage there is always hydrogen, if alternative battery chemistries don’t pan out.
- KptMarchewa 3y agoHydrogen conversion is not only very inefficient, the hydrogen plants are also extremely costly. Batteries are better bet.
- jofer 3y agoOnly for short term storage. Hydrogen is meant for longer term storage where batteries have too high of a losses. E.g. winter vs summer.
- KptMarchewa 3y ago