Mar
20
Geothermal Drilling Could Get Easier
March 20, 2012 | 1 Comment
About 30 years ago Sandia Labs developed polycrystalline diamond compact (PDC) bits for geothermal drilling. Today nearly two-thirds of the oil we use comes from wells drilled using the (PDC) bits. That’s technology gone astray, valuable – and still missing the original point. Now Sandia and the U.S. Navy recently brought the technology back full [...]
Jul
11
Building Step One for Major Geothermal Growth
July 11, 2011 | 2 Comments
University of Nevada’s Bureau of Mines and Geology in the College of Science funded by a $1 million Department of Energy grant from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 has reached the one-year mark. The money is being spent to understand and characterize geothermal potential at nearly 500 sites throughout the Great Basin [...]
Jun
9
A Better Geothermal System
June 9, 2011 | 2 Comments
Two University of Minnesota Department of Earth Sciences researchers, Earth sciences faculty member Martin Saar and graduate student Jimmy Randolph have developed a new way for tapping heat beneath the Earth’s surface. The pair has already named the method, called CO2-plume geothermal system, or CPG. The research was published in the most recent issue of [...]
Mar
15
A Lot More Geothermal Power Is Coming
March 15, 2011 | 3 Comments
According to a report released last week by Pike Research we’ll see a significant increase in the use of geothermal as an energy source between now and 2020. The Pike Research analyst constructed several scenarios based on an estimated 10.7 gigawatts of geothermal capacity in existence throughout the world in 2010. The U.S., the world’s [...]
Oct
7
Google Helps Geothermal In A Big Way
October 7, 2010 | 7 Comments
Google.org funded a grant to Southern Methodist University’s Geothermal Laboratory that suggests that the temperature of the Earth beneath the state of West Virginia is significantly higher than previously estimated and capable of supporting commercial baseload geothermal energy production. This is very significant news. A very large thanks to Google for getting money where is [...]
May
27
Major Geothermal Drilling Progress
May 27, 2010 | 2 Comments
Potter Drilling’s new technology differs from current air-based techniques because they use hot fluid rather than air to spall the rock. Because spallation occurs in a water-filled borehole, Potter Drilling’s technology can be used to drill to depths required for engineered geothermal system (EGS) plants 12,000 to 30,000 feet. 30K feet is major in that [...]
May
20
A Worthwhile Foray Into Nuclear Energy
May 20, 2010 | 10 Comments
Brian Wang over at NextBigFuture posted an interesting collection of nuclear energy pages under the title ‘Carnival of Nuclear Energy’. Brian did a good job of catching the current events and in his way of brief titles and very short summaries puts out the bait for linking out to more info. Brian covers some 14 [...]
Apr
21
Big Growth From Little Geothermal
April 21, 2010 | 2 Comments
Small geothermal in the US grew in the past year with 144 projects under way in 15 US states. When completed, the projects will add more than 7,000MW of baseload power capacity, roughly equivalent to the total power used in California from coal-fired power plants. That’s an average of 37.25MW each. It really adds up. [...]
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