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 | 4 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 [...]
Jan
22
The Missing Geothermal Technology
January 22, 2010 | 10 Comments
Regular readers might recall this writer isn’t wedded to only using fluids for circulating into geothermal reservoirs. A link sent by a reader led to a fellow well on the way to having a ground source geothermal system that transfers energy with air instead of water, antifreeze or other fluids. Its an air to air [...]
Dec
15
The Case For More Geothermal Power
December 15, 2009 | 2 Comments
Research, discovery, creativity and innovation have a way of coming forward with seemingly high user costs that come down as ideas grow into larger markets. A prime example is wind power that we’ve seen grow from nearly invisible to forests of wind turbines across swaths of North America. Many wonder what is so slow about [...]
Sep
17
A Way to Get Very Deep Geothermal Drilling
September 17, 2009 | 4 Comments
Researchers at ETH Zurich are using heated oxygen, ethanol and water pumped into their reactor burner through various pipelines and valves and mix them under temperature and pressure conditions, which correspond to the supercritical state of water (see illustration below) in an effort to get to energy rich deep geothermal rock. The researchers observe the [...]
Sep
8
AltaRock Loses Its Geothermal Hole
September 8, 2009 | 1 Comment
AltaRock Energy, the company pursuing an advanced geothermal energy technology has had to suspend its first attempt to drill a deep well in Northern California. The effort was funded by Google and venture capital company Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers with partial funding by a Department of Energy grant. Some part of the $17 million [...]
