Jul

11

Building Step One for Major Geothermal Growth

July 11, 2011 | Leave a Comment

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. [...]

Apr

9

What’s Gone Wrong With Geothermal?

April 9, 2010 | 3 Comments

At a site like this what is missing can be very disconcerting.  Missing in total positive content are big geothermal projects. It’s not all bad news. But for one post lets have a look at the problems. The current mainstream technology catch all term is Enhanced Geothermal Systems or EGS. Much of what geothermal is [...]

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