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Iceland has profitable geothermal, no? Maybe you meant that geothermal has not achieved profitability in non-especially favorable environments. I think we shou
by citadel_melon 2y ago
Iceland has profitable geothermal, no? Maybe you meant that geothermal has not achieved profitability in non-especially favorable environments.
I think we should be subsidizing geothermal to make the technology cheaper and cheaper, like we had with solar and wind. Seems plausible that we could make the technology economically feasible in more geographic areas (similarly to solar) and mitigate duck curve inefficiencies other green energy technologies suffer from.
Also to hedge my statement: solar is not economically feasible everywhere, but it is now economically feasible in many more environments (with sufficient sun coverage) than before.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> Iceland has profitable geothermal, no? Iceland doesn’t have natural gas. (I also imagine the winds and high latitude make solar complicated.)
- xcskier56 2y agoIceland has boiling hot water at the surface and so doesn’t need to drill far to reach hot rocks do to all the volcanism there. This does not apply to the vast majority of the world
- mirekrusin 2y agoAre deepsea power cables from Iceland feasable or they'd have to store it as ie. hydrogen to send over?
- Reason077 2y agoFeasable, and the concept has been proposed, but doesn't look likely to be built in the near future. There are still lower hanging (more profitable) fruit when it comes to building undersea HVDC cables. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelink https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelink
- jfengel 2y agoSeems like one might hold off on underseas power cables until we figure out how to keep Russian and Chinese ships from having so many accidents.
- adgjlsfhk1 2y agopower cables are a lot less vulnerable than fiber since cutting a cable carrying 500kv DC will do nasty things to whatever you're trying to cut with
- appointment 2y agoEstlink 2 (650MW, 450 kV) has been cut twice in a year, with months-long outages in both cases.
- thinkcontext 2y agoIceland exports carbon free electricity in the form of aluminum.
- Reason077 2y agoIt's not carbon free. Iceland's geothermal fields have carbon emissions because gasses trapped beneath the surface are released along with the steam when they're extracted. It's still low-carbon compared to a natural gas power plant, of course, but not compared to wind/hydro/nuclear. And aluminium production is certainly not carbon free: the smelting process reduces aluminium oxide to aluminium metal using carbon electrodes, producing around 14 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of aluminium.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- glenstein 2y agoWell the question was "Iceland has profitable geothermal, no?" and your answer appears to be yes. Which is important because it means the upshot is that there are viable applications, which contrasts against the argument that lack of generalized solution means we need to reject it wholesale.
- SkiFire13 2y agoThe point likely was that even though both are "geothermal" they aren't really in the same category, so facts about one may not apply to the other.
- glenstein 2y agoHere's a link to a map of geothermal hotspots comparable to Iceland. There seems to be a lot in the same category. https://www.edengeothermal.com/about/geothermal-energy/worldwide-potential/ https://www.edengeothermal.com/about/geothermal-energy/world...
- caminante 2y agoNot quite. The original comment (by @animats) specified shallow (viable) versus deep (unviable). > nobody seems to have a profitable deep geothermal power operation. That nuance got lost.
- citadel_melon 2y agoThe original comment stated that shallow geothermal can be useful for heating, but did not say anything about shallow geothermal electricity generation.
- caminante 2y agoNo. See the first paragraph. [0] The reference explicitly gets into "deep geothermal" (i.e., EGS) and talks about power applications that are viable because of limited drilling (i.e., shallow). > The more than 1 gigawatt of geothermal power currently produced globally — from California to Iceland to the Philippines — relies nearly exclusively on such natural outpourings of the earth’s heat. The building heat comment is just a reference to another residential/C&I application with ground loops. They're not dismissing or not acknowledging the grid-scale power applications. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43234465 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43234465
- Galatians4_16 2y agoUS has quite a few hot springs, especially in southwestern states.
- abracadaniel 2y agoSciShow did an interesting video on geothermal potential/drawbacks of Yellowstone. https://youtu.be/rqkJiMDAIpA https://youtu.be/rqkJiMDAIpA
- petre 2y agoThey also have volcanic eruptions every few years. https://www.visiticeland.com/eruption/ https://www.visiticeland.com/eruption/
- rad_gruchalski 2y agoIceland sits on an active volcano.
- dboreham 2y agoSo do many populated places.
- guillem_lefait 2y agoAnd often those places are islands, meaning their grid are isolated.
- degurechaff 2y agowell, java is island but the island have BIG populations
- rad_gruchalski 2y agoGreat for them, I guess. I live thousands of miles away from Java. You? The point isn’t “there are 1500 active volcanoes on the planet”, the point is is “there are many places not in the proximity of one of 1500 active volcanoes”.
- guillem_lefait 2y agoI live in Martinique, in the Caribbean and there is a somewhat inactive [0] volcano. To generate electricity, we are importing oil/biogaz from Europe. Solar is ramping up but it makes sense to use volcano heat if: - the associated risks are low (earthquakes, just got a 4.8 30 minutes ago [1]) - tropical climate does not make maintenance too costly Even if it's not the cheapest option, if it can provide some backup, that could be an option. Because solar panel and hurricanes are not best friends. [0] that kills 30k people in 1902 : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1902_eruption_of_Mount_Pel%C3%A9e https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1902_eruption_of_Mount_Pel%C3%... [1] https://www.emsc-csem.org/Earthquake_information/earthquake.php?id=1778277 https://www.emsc-csem.org/Earthquake_information/earthquake....
- Reason077 2y ago> "Iceland has profitable geothermal, no?" The USA actually produces far more geothermal power than Iceland. So does New Zealand. The Geysers geothermal complex in California alone has more than double the capacity of all geothermal plants in Iceland combined: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Geysers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Geysers
- glenstein 2y agoI think the point of the Iceland example was to illustrate the local viability of geothermal. But your reply seems to be emphasizing the relative value of geothermal in the U.S. vs Iceland which I don't think is a question that anything important hinges on. The upshot of U.S. geothermal production should be "awesome, so much the better for geothermal!" I find it bizarre and unnecessary to decide that the upshot is supposed to be "yeah, suck it Iceland!" It just has nothing to do with anything.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- micro2588 2y agoOrmat (NYSE ORA) is a publicly traded geothermal company and they are profitable.