4 ms·

I don’t think thermodynamics lets that work. You can’t move heat from something cold to something hot so unless you are preheating your water to a temperature h

I don’t think thermodynamics lets that work. You can’t move heat from something cold to something hot so unless you are preheating your water to a temperature higher than your deep borehole rocks, all you’re doing is putting the first N joules of heat energy into the water you’re going to pump into your steam turbines using excess grid energy instead of geothermal energy.

audunw 3y ago
Of course you can move heat from something hot to something cold, it’s called a heat pump. Though yeah I get what you meant. There are heat pumps that have entered production that are designed to generate the kind of industrial levels of heat required to heat the water to the level required to add heat to such reservoirs. Whether it makes sense, I can’t say. But it certainly makes sense for geothermal well used for district heating (not electricity). It’s already being done. Funny thought: if you use a heat pump to store heat energy in summer to be used in winter.. and your reservoir can retain the heat efficiently (think the heavily insulated sand reservoir used in a project in Finland for instance)… could that make the battery effectively more than 100% efficient?
- iancmceachern 3y ago
  "Lisa! In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!" - Homer