Great Basin Map from Wikipedia. Click image for the largest view.

The research aim is to provide a catalogue of favorable structural elements, such as the pattern of faulting and models for geothermal systems and site-specific targeting using innovative techniques for fault analysis.  The project will enhance exploration methodologies and reduce the risk of drilling nonproductive wells.

Jim Faulds, geologist and research professor at the University of Nevada, who is principal investigator for the project, explains, “The geothermal industry doesn’t have the same depth of knowledge for geothermal exploration as the mineral and oil industries. Mineral and oil companies conducted extensive research years ago that helps them to characterize favorable settings and determine where to drill. With geothermal, it’s studies like this that will enhance understanding of what controls hot fluids in the earth’s crust and thus provide an exploration basis for industry to use in discovering and developing resources.”

Professor Faulds at the Fly Geyser lectures his geothermal exploration class at the Fly Ranch Geyser north of Gerlach, Nevada.

This is the basic stuff needed to learn about how to find and exploit the resources below.

Faulds has a team of six researchers and several graduate students working with him on various aspects of the project.  Understanding the character of known geothermal systems is critical for new discoveries, targeting drilling sites and development. The success of modeling sites for exploration is limited without basic knowledge of which fault and fracture patterns, stress conditions, and stratigraphic intervals are most conducive to hosting geothermal reservoirs.

Faulds describes the situation, “Of the 463 geothermal sites to study, we’ve studied and characterized more than 250 in the past year, either using existing records or on-site analyses. We’ll continue to study more of the sites so we can develop better methods and tools for geothermal exploration. Most, about two-thirds, of the geothermal resources in the Great Basin are blind – that is, there are no surface expressions, such as hot springs, to indicate what’s perhaps 1,500 feet below the surface.”

Faulds and his team has reached the one-year mark and is entering phase two, when five or six of the 250 identified potentially viable geothermal sites will be studied in more detail. Some of the studied sites will even have 3-D imaging to help those in the industry better understand geothermal processes and identify where to drill for the hot fluids.

If the research works out reliably in the real world the benefits could be significant.  Without exposed hot water at the surface like geysers, knowing what’s below has been, essentially a guessing game, replacing that with solid scientific principles should reduce the upfront risks.

Faulds and his team have defined a spectrum of favorable structural settings for geothermal systems in the Great Basin and completed a preliminary catalogue that interprets the structural setting of most its geothermal systems.  Faulds points out, “This is the first attempt to broadly characterize and catalogue Great Basin geothermal systems in this way.”

“We want to help the industry achieve acceptable levels of site-selection risk ahead of expensive drilling,” Faulds said. “This study costs only $1 million, but it could cost a company several million dollars for drilling at a single prospect in the hopes that they hit a good hot well. Our research will provide the baseline studies that are absolutely needed if Nevada is going to become the Saudi Arabia of geothermal.”

The Great Basin can be a major resource.  The University of Nevada at Reno runs the new National Geothermal Academy, the first such academy of its kind in the nation. The academy, which runs from June 20 through Aug. 12, offers a unique blend of geothermal-related classes.

The Academy is a consortium of top geothermal schools from around the country that have joined with the University of Nevada, including Cornell University, Stanford University, Southern Methodist University, West Virginia University, the Oregon Institute of Technology, the University of Utah and Dartmouth. The consortium is designed to transform and grow the national energy infrastructure to utilize America’s vast geothermal resource base. The academy will educate and train the next generation of scientists, engineers, plant operators and policymakers.

The enthusiasm is gaining ground and some rather good apostles. One example is Paul Schwering, a geophysics graduate student at the University of Nevada, and the student ambassador for the National Geothermal Academy.

Paul Schwerlin Measures a Fault Surface. Click image for the largest view.

According to Schwering, Nevada has an uncommonly high amount of geothermal energy available, energy waiting to be tapped into. Nevada’s geothermal reservoirs offer a continuous source of energy that is sustainable, clean, and free from radiation and doesn’t require burning fossil fuels. The end result presents tantalizing possibilities for Nevada.

“Nevada should be an energy exporter,” Schwering said. “And geothermal should be a big part of that – and we’ve got geothermal in spades.”

The Great Basin covers most of Nevada and notable parts of Oregon, Utah and California.  With the potential electrical demand market, and California’s mystifying policies, there should be a great future for the other states to exploit an inexhaustible resource for everyone’s benefit.  The know how gained will get beyond the Great Basin, too.

Martin Saar, University of Minnesota Geothermal System Designer. Image credit, Josh Kohanek.

The pair has already named the method, called CO2-plume geothermal system, or CPG.  The research was published in the most recent issue of Geophysical Research Letters. The men have applied for a patent and plan to form a start-up company to commercialize the new technology.  Here’s why:

The CPG system uses high-pressure CO2 instead of water as the underground heat-carrying medium. Randolph explains, “This is probably viable in areas you couldn’t even think about doing regular geothermal for electricity production. In areas where you could, it’s perhaps twice as efficient.”

First, CO2 travels more easily than water through porous rock, so it can extract heat more readily. As a result, CPG can be used in regions where conventional geothermal electricity production would not make sense from a technical or economic standpoint.  Because pure CO2 is less likely than water to dissolve the materials when passing through, CPG reduces the risk of a geothermal system not being able to operate for long periods due to “short-circuiting” or plugging the flow of fluid through the hot rocks.

Another idea is the technology could be used in parallel to boost fossil fuel production from hot reservoirs by pushing natural gas or oil from partially depleted reservoirs as the CO2 is injected.

Add in another advantage – CO2 isn’t as corrosive as water, a major problem when using heated water.

The story is Saar and Randolph first hit on the idea behind CPG in the fall of 2008 while driving to northern Minnesota together to conduct unrelated field research. The two had been conducting research on geothermal energy capture and separately on geologic CO2 sequestration.

Saar explains, “We connected the dots and said, ‘Wait a minute – what are the consequences if you use geothermally heated CO2?’. We had a hunch in the car that there should be lots of advantages to doing that.”

The pair is exploiting the atmospheric CO2 craze as well.  With two motivators, the flash of insight on a northern Minnesota road trip was jump-started with $600,000 in funding from the University of Minnesota Institute on the Environment’s Initiative for Renewable Energy and the Environment (IREE).  After working the idea up, the pair applied for and received a grant from the IREE, which disburses funds from Xcel Energy’s Renewable Development Fund to help launch potentially transformative projects in emerging fields of energy and the environment.

The IREE grant paid for preliminary computer modeling and allowed Saar and Randolph to bring on board energy policy, applied economics and mechanical engineering experts from the University of Minnesota as well as modeling experts from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. It also helped leverage a $1.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to explore subsurface chemical interactions involved in the process.

Saar points up the importance of the early small-scale support, “The IREE grant was really critical. This is the kind of project that requires a high-risk investment. I think it’s fair to say that there’s a good chance that it wouldn’t have gone anywhere without IREE support in the early days.”

Just recently they applied for additional DOE funding to move CPG forward to the pilot phase.

Randolph said, “Part of the beauty of this is that it combines a lot of ideas but the ideas are essentially technically proven, so we don’t need a lot of new technology developed.”

Saar takes the point further, “It’s combining proven technology in a new way. It’s one of those things where you know how the individual components work. The question is, how will they perform together in this new way? The simulation results suggest it’s going to be very favorable.”

The established method for harvesting the Earth’s heat to make electricity involve extracting hot water from rock formations several hundred feet from the Earth’s surface at the few natural hot spots around the world, then using the hot water to turn power-producing turbines.

Without the water already there for a project, some very cautioning questions arise such as how much water would be needed to get a cycling system filled.  Then the mineralization and corrosion issues come up.  These can be ‘bottomless pit’ kinds of things.

But gasses, especially ones in great volumes of supply would get around those risks.  It’s also much easier to pump gas down and back.  The idea, should more pilot work come up positive, would open a vastly larger areas to geothermal production.

In the other hand the mass of gasses compared to water is quite small.  One will have to move a lot and quickly – which is just what using a gas can offer.

Its not clear that drilling to the heat source would be any less or more costly. What is clear is getting the heat moved has a new method that’s been begging for research for years.  The gas heat moving system should offer a lot of opportunity and perhaps a lower cost of production for a longer period of time.

Rigging gas circulation in a heat source suggests a binary system that dumps the heat into a closed circulator to drive generators.  As shown with water systems, binary systems need not have such hot sources.  Near the point of boiling water is enough to start, even though the hotter the better.

The billion-dollar question is, where are the easily accessible dry hot rocks with existing passages to get the gas heated.

The Minnesotans have gotten the circulating gas technology some legs.  It’s a very high potential method that intuition suggests has very good prospects.  Go guys, and keep those papers coming.

Hot Ground Water Geothermal Heat Unit. Click image for the largest view.

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 leading user currently possesses 3.1 gigawatts of installed geothermal systems compared to the 10.7 added gigawatts of new resources.  Pike’s research shows 88 percent of the world’s geothermal energy systems currently in operation are used in only eight countries, leaving lots of room to grow the industry.

Pike Report On Regional Geothermal Growth Potential. Click image for the largest view.

Peter Asmus, senior analyst of the report, emphasized that geothermal is currently one of the world’s least-tapped opportunities for alternative energy and said in a press statement, “Worldwide potential for geothermal energy is immense, but geothermal remains an underutilized resource and represents only a small fraction of the global renewable energy portfolio. Improved access to resource data, more efficient drilling processes, increased understanding about the industry’s potential, and improving access to financing are driving expanding interest in the sector.”

Pike reminds that the worldwide potential is immense, but geothermal remains an underutilized resource and represents only a small fraction of the global renewable energy portfolio. Improved access to resource data, more efficient drilling processes, increased understanding about the industry’s potential, and improving access to financing can drive expanding interest in the sector.

Registered users can view the executive summary and report brochure without a fee, but full access costs a cool $3,800.00 for licensed access.

What jumps out from the report is what’s missing, particularly in the U.S., the ground source heating or cooling.  Those systems while small and still over priced use heat from the ground in simple heat pump systems to extract heat or dump heat as needed for space heating.
Even so, the Pike hot rock based research, high growth projection, estimates a sharp increase in online geothermal capacity over the next decade, reaching 25.1 GW by 2020 and representing a 134% increase over current capacity and a 9% compound annual growth rate.   Under this optimistic scenario the projected the value of the global geothermal power market would exceed $11.7 billion by 2020.

Using only conventional sources of hydrothermal, enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) in hot dry rock and co-produced and geopressured methods, Pike estimates from compiled data that, at minimum, 190 GW of conventional geothermal resources are exploitable with current technology.   This represents 1,022 terawatt hours (TWh) of clean base load electricity.  No small thing at all.  Lets look at some highlights.

Pike notes a need and progress of a change in financing.  With high upfront costs and long project development timelines, the geothermal power market was dealt a blow by the economic downturn over the past two years.  Despite the setback, geothermal development appears to be gaining renewed support from the global financial market.  In addition to key loan guarantees and grants distributed across 123 projects in the United States through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, non-financial government support for geothermal power is also accelerating.

Geothermal exploration, although still largely speculative is on the rise, aided by improving technology, more sophisticated techniques, and streamlined land leasing programs.  Emerging standards  – most notably from the Canadian Geothermal Association  (CanGEA) – aims to mitigate persistent exploration risk and attract investors to the industry.

The large countries/companies are going after big geothermal resources – at least 200 MW – primarily located in areas of high volcanic activity.  Smaller companies are targeting smaller resources  (50 MW or less) and utilizing modular approaches to developing resources in order to reduce costs.

Today flash steam and dry steam turbines dominate the market, representing 87% of current online capacity.   However, binary turbines, which are smaller, are coming on strong  – aided by their lower price point and suitability for lower temperature resources.   Binary turbines are increasingly being employed to develop marginal wells on the outskirts of currently producing geothermal sites as well as for co-produced and geopressured resources.

Once the financial business calms, or common sense takes hold, despite high upfront costs, geothermal compares favorably to other renewable energy and fossil fuel sources due to its low emissions, capacity, and levelized cost of energy.  That might mean a cash cow situation could unfold for investors in soundly engineered projects.

Another industry drag is at least 350 projects are currently under development throughout the world, shortages of financing, drilling rigs, and skilled labor persists.  These factors will continue to impede development over the next decade.

There is some cheerful insight for many on where the likely growth could be.  More efficient land tenure programs, as well as drilling assistance, renewable portfolio standards, and feed-in tariff pricing are beginning to accelerate the industry’s growth.

But, to realize its full potential, the geothermal power industry needs: more effective policy regimes that encourage development, financing support to get projects developed, and a legislative framework that mitigates risk.  Upfront costs for initial exploration and development are a persistent hurdle to attracting financing, and the industry needs to more effectively educate the financing community about geothermal economics before it can realize its full potential. Some of the countries in the graphic can get support organized, but the tenure of such programs should be thought out much more carefully than the biofuel efforts used so far.

The full report runs nearly ninety pages.  The attendant documents, the executive summary, brochure and the press release cover the basics.  At the price it’s likely out of reach for all but the most interested people.  There is at such a price an indication that the information is pretty solid.  Even at the low range of growth, geothermal has a good future.  The problems as explained aren’t about the energy, but that the economics and political impacts have the brakes on.

West Virginia Geothermal Map. Click image for the largest view.

The SMU Geothermal Laboratory has increased its estimate of West Virginia’s geothermal generation potential to 18,890 megawatts (assuming a conservative 2% thermal recovery rate). The new estimate represents a 75 percent increase over estimates in the well used MIT 2006 “The Future of Geothermal Energy” report and exceeds the state’s total current generating capacity, primarily coal based, of 16,350 megawatts.

SMU’s West Virginia discovery is the result of new detailed mapping and interpretation of temperature data derived from oil, gas, and thermal gradient wells — part of an ongoing project to update the Geothermal Map of North America that Blackwell produced with colleague Maria Richards in 2004. Temperatures below the Earth almost always increase with depth, but the rate of increase (the thermal gradient) varies due to factors such as the thermal properties of the rock formations.

Blackwell explains, “By adding 1,455 new thermal data points from oil, gas, and water wells to our geologic model of West Virginia, we’ve discovered significantly more heat than previously thought. The existing oil and gas fields in West Virginia provide a geological guide that could help reduce uncertainties associated with geothermal exploration and also present an opportunity for co-producing geothermal electricity from hot waste fluids generated by existing oil and gas wells.”

The high temperature zones beneath West Virginia revealed by the new mapping are concentrated in the eastern portion of the state. Starting at depths of 4.5 km (greater than 15,000 feet), temperatures reach over 150°C (300°F), which is hot enough for commercial geothermal power production.

Blackwell continues, “The early West Virginia research is very promising but we still need more information about local geological conditions to refine estimates of the magnitude, distribution, and commercial significance of their geothermal resource.”

Zachary Frone, an SMU graduate student researching the area said, “More detailed research on subsurface characteristics like depth, fluids, structure and rock properties will help determine the best methods for harnessing geothermal energy in West Virginia.” The next step in evaluating the resource will be to locate specific target sites for focused investigations to validate the information used to calculate the geothermal energy potential in this study.

Of added significance the team’s work may also shed light on other similar geothermal resources. “We now know that two zones of Appalachian age structures are hot — West Virginia and a large zone covering the intersection of Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana known as the Ouachita Mountain region,” said Blackwell. “Right now we don’t have the data to fill in the area in between,” Blackwell continued, “but it’s possible we could see similar results over an even larger area.”  Lets hope the research finds a large extent of fast rising heat for geothermal production in the Eastern US.

Blackwell thinks the finding opens exciting possibilities for the region saying, “The proximity of West Virginia’s large geothermal resource to east coast population centers has the potential to enhance U.S. energy security, reduce CO2 emissions, and develop high paying clean energy jobs in West Virginia.”

The thanks for the SMU work goes directly back to Google.org whose RE<C initiative dedicated to using the power of information and innovation to advance breakthrough technologies in clean energy got the team the cash to do the work.  Those clicks for ads pay off in myriad ways.

The exciting part is in the commercial heat gradient and temperatures.  The technology is in hand for baseload generation in these conditions.  Another large potential geothermal idea is maturing nicely – the binary cycle that can use lower heat levels, down to 165°F.  A more specialized concept already working is co-production where the hot fluids like oil or hot natural gas also use the heat for power generation.

Then there is the Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) used in areas with low natural rock permeability but high temperatures of more than 300°F, which are “enhanced” by injecting fluid and other reservoir engineering techniques. EGS resources are typically deeper than hydrothermal and represent the largest share of total geothermal resources.  EGS is being aggressively researched globally in Germany, Australia, France, the United Kingdom, and the U.S. EGS is being tested in deep sedimentary basins similar to West Virginia’s in Germany and Australia.  EGS is more expensive than simpler systems but the geothermal reach to consumers is far wider.

These methods might find use in West Virginia, as the location of the hot rock is deep.  That and the West Virginia location is free from tectonic or volcanic activity.  These aspects offer the new techniques a grand opportunity.

Blackwell and his team at SMU’s Geothermal Laboratory will present a detailed report on the discovery at the 2010 Geothermal Resources Council annual meeting in Sacramento, Oct. 24-27. A summary of the report is available online here.

Great news for geothermal, the national economy and over time for ratepayers in the eastern US!  Thanks to Google.

The process starts by applying a high-intensity fluid stream to a rock surface to expand the crystalline grains within the rock. When the grains expand, micro-fractures occur in the rock and small particles called spalls are ejected. The process is accelerated by several factors including inherent stress in the rock formation.

Potter Drilling Process Steps. Click image for the largest view.

Potter Drilling is building on developments of spallation drilling technology. Air spallation drilling was used commercially from 1947 through 1961 for ore mining and was adapted to geothermal drilling by the U.S. Department of Energy in the 1970s. Air spallation demonstrated impressive drilling performance, producing 8in to 12in boreholes to depths of 1,100 feet at rates faster than 50 ft/hr through solid granite.

The engineers at Potter Drilling have developed a spallation-based technology that drills and removes rock without making contact with it – an approach to hard rock drilling they’re claiming has significant cost savings and performance advantages over conventional drilling technology.  That seems reasonable, without mechanical contact between equipment and the rock the grinding effect is skipped.   One can get an idea of the effect by hammering at granite with a rock hammer and checking one’s progress.

The oil and gas industry’s currently used drilling technology has been optimized over the past century for soft sedimentary rocks where petroleum deposits are found. Sandstone, shales and other sedimentary rocks are much easier to grind apart and the technology works well for extracting fossil fuels, but it’s not well suited for the crystalline hard-rock environment.

Potter Drilling Test Rig. Click image for the largest view.

Potter Drilling has tested two different laboratory prototype drills proving that the hydrothermal spallation can be effective in a wide range of rock types from the surface to deep borehole conditions.  The demonstrated penetration rates approach 30 ft/hr – five to 10 times higher than is achievable using conventional rotary contact bit technology common in the soft rock drilling field.

Potter Drilling Test Bore of White Granite. Click image for the largest view.

Potter Drilling is now proposing to construct a complete prototype drilling system and to conduct field trials to determine the technology’s real-world performance.

Potter Drilling is dedicated to reducing geothermal well costs, making widespread use of engineered geothermal systems an affordable alternative to other power sources. Drilling can represent more than 50% of the total cost of well development, so reducing drilling costs will significantly improved the economics of EGS-development.

The cost breakout for geothermal drilling are listed as rock penetration at 30 to 40%, pulling and reinserting the string of drill pipe at 10 to15%, the bore casing and cementing the casing 33 to 38%, planning running 3 to 8% and trouble allowance 8 to 10%. Potter Drilling’s technology has the potential to reduce the cost of completed EGS wells by 30% to 60% through faster rates of penetration, less tripping time, and dramatically reduced wear, resulting in more linear cost increases with depth.  The goal is to move the cost curve for drilling hard-rock wells from exponential cost increases with depth to linear cost increases with depth – dramatically lowering the cost for developing EGS systems.

It seems that the “bit” is really a reaction chamber where unnamed chemical reactants heat the water to 800º C.  The water is forced through a nozzle introducing stress to the rock where expansion differences fracture out spalls.  The water then carries the spalls out of the well bore.

Potter Drilling isn’t your typical venture capital funded idea.   Bob Potter is 88.  The bait of geothermal is very tasty, the 2006 MIT study suggested that geothermal could provide 2,500 times the energy now used in the U.S.

The obvious issues are getting the energy down the hole to heat the water, and keep the heating chamber and nozzle from melting or wearing away as 800º C is awfully hot.  The challenges are significant, but the payoff would be huge.

Jared Potter, Bob’s son who Bob recruited to run Potter Drilling says, “We think we can cut the cost by 50 percent.”  Maybe so, maybe better as the full range of those drilling costs are addressed.

The technology should be in the field in 2010 for prototype trials.  As a new, complex and untried device if it works at all outside of the lab – will be significant.

Hydrothermal spallation was invented and patented by co-founder Bob Potter and Jefferson Tester of MIT. The patent is owned by MIT and licensed exclusively to Potter Drilling.  Rig guys, you might want to follow Potter’s progress.

Most folks visiting here know that there is a very limited list of energy sources in the universe.  Solar fusion from stars radiating heat and light, some planets such as Earth with heavy elements in the core doing fission making geothermal heat, and humanities’ own fission and hopefully soon fusion and perhaps Mill’s BlackLight Energy are the only sources getting the energy available from Einstein’s E=MC² out where we can use it.  Virtually everything else called energy is really energy stored up in fuel.  (OK, the moon’s gravity driving tidal as well.)

Heat, light, motion and the other energy types are what we’re using, the work if you will – the other end of the chain from the universe’s and our own energy production to our work production.

Common sense suggests that from a fusion or fission event to the work we need to do in a chain with the fewest links will be the lowest investment cost and lowest energy unit cost.  That would equal a foundation for a healthy economy.  For example, one of the proposed small reactors, a generation set tied to an aluminum smelter would occupy less than a football field’s space and produce workable aluminum in huge quantities at very low cost for decades.  Other examples from process heat to electrical power abound.

That makes the efforts by Brian Wang, Charles Barton, Rod Adams and so many others critical – they are the resources that critical thinkers need to forecast and make decisions.

The press, media and opinion makers for the most part just don’t get the basic physics.  They don’t even distinguish between energy and fuel.  Politicians surely don’t, dawdling over nuclear energy is a fool’s path, the economy’s power need is going to peak again and the power industry isn’t likely going to be ready.  When the electron storage issue gets past reasonable thresholds for vehicle range – electrical transport will grow massively.  Believing they will all charge up over night is dimwitted.

From the lightest elements up to boron and from the less massive thorium up to uranium, the abundance of mass convertible to energy for humanity should easily outlast the solar system.

Modular PebbleBed Reactor Block Diagram. Click image for the largest view.

Can you tell the issues Brian Wang covered on his post set this writer off a bit?  The most interesting topics Brian chose are:  Nuclear Green’s look at the Gas Cooled Reactor.  Then there is the Atomic Insights report of the Platts sponsored meeting ‘Small Nuclear Reactor: Time Frame for Development and Outlook for Commercial Viability’.  NextBigFuture’s own new reactor plans for Turkey, Mexico, South Korea, plus India. That’s just the short list.

Federal level politicians can’t impress anyone knowledgeable and unbiased without serious attention given to nuclear power.  One would hope for a decade of moratorium on license fees for starters, both for reactor designs, but also for installed facilities.  Serious attention needs given to safety, a requisite, but just as important is to set the bureaucracy on a path of getting to the lowest cost for produced energy must be job #2.

This writer has been on the lookout for the link list page for nuclear that would justify the attention of regular readers – and Brian Wang comes close.  Surfing the net can be exasperating at times, providing distractions, and informing, misleading, and tantalizing the surfer.

Nuclear energy might just be the most exasperating field on the Internet.  The subject is rife with mis, dis and prejudiced, biased, and just plain wrong information.  Atomic fission can be dangerous to be sure, but when designs seek to slowly extract the maximum energy vs. the building of heavier unstable elements for other purposes (weapons), the danger goes down – way way down.

The prognosticators of the late 1940s could have been right, nuclear energy could have been almost to cheap to meter.  The opportunity has passed by, but knowledge has grown and expanded out – while not so very cheap – nuclear cower could set off a centuries long steady and linear economic boom.

Get up to speed!  Its time the knowledgeable outnumber the indefatigably ignorant.

But – Don’t read about the Presidential Awards given to NRC executives - unless you need a bit of heartburn.  The NRC might give some thought to pushing the industry along instead of betraying the U.S. Taxpayers and consumers.

Geothermal Projects with size by State 2009. Click image for the largest view.

Smaller yet would be the ground source heat pump systems.  More on that below.  But take out the disappointing large projects and the personal or very local projects and that 7,000MW looks very good indeed.

The numbers are from the April 2010 US Geothermal Power Production and Development Update showing 26% growth.  Nevada continued the lead for new geothermal energy, with more than 3,000MW under development. The fastest-growing geothermal power states are Utah, which quadrupled its geothermal power under development, New Mexico, which tripled, Idaho, which doubled, and Oregon, which reported a 50 per cent increase. Add Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas all reporting their first geothermal projects.

According to the GEA, the projects under development when completed will total a capital investment of more than $35 billion.  New geothermal power projects for 2010 are in progress in 15 states from the Pacific to the Gulf Coast. The GEA identified new projects in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.

One of the more remarkable efforts is in Alaska where the Chena Hot Springs unit built in 2006 has been upgraded now twice from the first 225kW with another 225kw and 280kW totaling 780kW.  Chena Hot Springs Unit II has received GRED III funding for phase one of a project that could rate from 5 to 10MW.  The first project is a binary design using organic rankine cycle from a cool 165ºF source.  Chena Hot Springs remains a leader and example for the U.S.

The best U.S. example is the Puna Geothermal Venture on the Big Island of Hawaii.  At 35MW rating the unit runs steadily between 25 to 30 MW providing about 20 percent of Big Island’s total needs.  The Puna team is showing that geothermal is a certain base load provider.

Nevada is seeing a lot of action.  Vulcan has three large projects ranging from 117 to perhaps a much as 378MW.  There is a veritable army of small projects starting as small as 8.4MW.  At this rate it won’t be long before Nevada is self sufficient and selling power for cash – even with the lights of Las Vegas to feed.

The momentum is building – slowly.  In March of 2006 the U.S. had 34 projects booked.  For October 2009 the projects booked totaled 132, a 388% increase over 3½ years.  Yet March 2006 saw about 2825MW installed and October 2009 3150MW installed.  Some big projects would help with that number – which is why one presumes the political class likes the big ones.

Geothermal Project Growth 2006 to 2009. Click image for the largest view.

As geothermal technology progresses, resources that were once non-commercial are now being actively examined as feasible possibilities.  The term Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) is a common reference to any resource that requires artificial stimulation and includes resources that have to be fully engineered, or ones that produce hydrothermal fluid, but sub-commercially. In certain respects EGS is still a young and not fully proven technology. However, several EGS R&D and demonstration projects are underway in the United States. As EGS technology proves to be successful, its expected to allow significantly increased extension and production from existing fields, as well as utilization of geothermal energy in what was considered previously as implausible locations.

A pittance of grant money is still committed.  The U.S. Department of Energy has invested more than $5 million in a project that is currently in development and is designed to be the first geothermal operation to commercially produce geothermal energy via EGS in the lower 48 of the United States.

Another curious resource is the heat often found in oil and gas production fields as well as certain mining operations. The Southern Methodist University Geothermal Energy Program has estimated that geothermal hydrocarbon co-production (GHCP) operations in the Texas Gulf Plains has the capability of providing 1000 to 5000 MW of power.  There are two of these already working.

The GHCP operation at the Jay Oilfield in Florida is planned to utilize 120,000 barrels of co-produced water with Pratt & Whitney Power Systems Pure Cycle Power System. The expected capacity of the project is 200kW but has potential for 1MW.

Rocky Mountain Oil Test Center’s project near Casper, Wyoming installed a 250 kW Ormat organic rankine cycle power unit.  Through February 2009, the unit produced more than 586MWh of power from 3 million barrels of hot water online 97 percent of the time.  The unit was shutdown for maintenance and repair and has been down while the field network of wells is being modified to produce a more consistent volume of water.

There is also renewed interest in the energy potential of geopressured-geothermal resources. While located in a number of states, the most significant resources are thought to be located in the northern Gulf of Mexico, particularly Texas and Louisiana both offshore and onshore. The USGS has estimated that in addition to thousands of megawatts of geothermal energy, these resources hold as much as 1,000 TCF of potentially recoverable gas.

The U.S is getting there on geothermal.  Maybe the big flashy and scary to the ignorant and numb has been set back by irrational fears, but the midsized and smaller projects are coming faster, better and at lower cost.  EGS might not satisfy the bureaucrats, but the market is growing for binary systems.

Lastly, the Geothermal Heat Pump industry has seen continuous growth over the last five years. The 2008 units reached 121,243 shipped, nearly double the 2006 units shipped and the capacity shipped rose to 416,105 tons or almost 500 million btu per hour.  Although geothermal heat pumps tend to cost more initially than traditional heating and cooling systems, the high efficiency and ongoing cost-saving potential of geothermal heat pumps has resulted in them becoming more appealing to many more consumers.

Midsize, small and personal geothermal is going great.  The large projects might be stalled, but geothermal is making it clear, almost everyone can get some power or lots of it and cut way back for heating and cooling energy requirements.  Left to the individuals, small business and American’s willingness to invest and geothermal will grow to be a big industry no matter what the Federal government’s activities.

The current mainstream technology catch all term is Enhanced Geothermal Systems or EGS. Much of what geothermal is running now isn’t ‘enhanced’ so mush as standard technology.  Factually, the locations where non-enhanced projects easily can work are pretty much covered and slowly developing.  The action could would and should be in the areas where EGS technology is going to need be applied.

The past year or so has been a kind of reality check period for the business.  Make no mistake; geothermal energy still leads any other system for sustainable base load power production without any storage requirements.  Geology is a wonderful thing when it’s the storage media.

Much of the trepidation is based on the potential of earthquakes occurring in geothermal areas coming from the tremors that occurred during the Geox project in Landau, Germany. It’s not the first or last time that rumblings and geothermal projects have happened in the same neighborhood. Most areas where hot rocks occur relatively near the surface also tend to be areas prone to earthquakes. The EGS process of fracturing rock layers via hydraulic pressure, necessary to inject and heat the water before pumping it back up, can also trigger seismic shifts in underground rocks.

Admittedly the trepidation is leaning to hysteria.  A fracture effort might loosen up a localized area less than a football field in a system of continental plates.  The pressures applied are minor compared to the pressures between colliding plates.  But the activity offers stresses – a wee bit more stress that might just cut loose some “compressed spring type energy” that would in all likelihood come loose at some point in time anyway.  Some geophysicist will come up with the courage to point out that geothermal may well have a protective or preservative effect in certain situations.

The Alps, where the German effort and the ended Swiss effort at Basel are located the Africa plate is sliding under Europe.  The Alps are going up and there’s going to be some shaking.  At least geothermal efforts are more predictable for now, shaking induced or not. In December of ’09 the Swiss government permanently shut down the geothermal project near Basel that was suspended in 2006 following a series of minor earthquakes.  Fear rules, justified or not.

The very next day, AltaRock Energy announced to the U.S. Department of Energy it was abandoning its project at The Geysers in Northern California.  The project was an attempt to expand an existing conventional geothermal project using EGS.  The AltaRock Geysers project was supposed to be the flagship of the Obama administration’s push for clean energy, enjoying the backing in millions of not only federal taxpayer dollars but also included Google.org and other private investors.

There seems to be more to it than the Swiss move the day before.  AltaRock only got to 4,400 feet of the planned 12,000 when they struck a rock called serpentinized peridotite that allowed the hole to collapse.  Drilling through “hard rock” is different than what most oil and gas drilling is – working through ‘soft rock”.   Try a whack at a bit of granite and then a bit of sandstone – using gloves and goggles – to get the point.  The petroleum folks can tell you, as they drill through both, that drilling through those hard rock layers is something best avoided when most all your equipment is soft rock engineered.

In Australia Geodymanics, the one world success at proving the EGS concept is in a major delay at its Cooper Basin project in South Australia. The company’s goal of a 50-megawatt plant by 2012 was recently set back some two years due to the corrosion and failure of the project’s well casing pipe.  This demonstrates that the metallurgy needed of well casing pipe set into hard rock and with water the moving fluid is going to be very different from moving petroleum even when the petroleum has very salty water coming along.

Perhaps the longest running effort is in Canada, the Meager Mountain geothermal project north of Vancouver is setting a record for longevity in development. The area was first recognized as a good geothermal site in the mid-1970s, with both test and deep holes being drilled for the next 30 years. Today Ram Power continues to pursue the project, but it appears the effort is in stasis.

Even if success and power generation could get underway the power has to be transmitted. MidAmerican Energy abandoned its Salton Sea project in California mainly due to lack of transmission line resources, therefore no access to markets.

By no means is it all bad news.  Binary systems on the small scale seem to be quietly growing along at a happy pace.  Not so deep and not so hot and usually lacking in the caustic, or corrosive chemistry these projects generate the most progress.  This size of development isn’t making much news.  But one of these days someone will add up all that’s been installed and get us some statistics worth writing about. It might be bigger numbers than we might expect.

EGS still has lots to offer.  The technical challenges in deep hot regions with difficult and unusual chemistries where the circulation water brings heat and problems will get solved.  Innovation will get the holes drilled and get past those difficult regions.

The issues have to do with the politics and the fairness of the treatment of the people living and working near to a developing and working project.  Yup, the ground might shake during development, it probably would shake someday anyway and might shake just because the hot rocks will gradually cool.  Geothermal isn’t without some risk, even so small as the risk is and as predictable thus manageable.

The major concern is the political and media arena.  Problems get way over magnified, solution get picked to death, progress slows to an intermittent crawl if moving at all.  EGS offers “BIG” a perspective that government and media types feed on.  Small just isn’t of much interest.  That might be a very good thing.

It’s a sure good thing Big is big.  The expense to solve the technical challenges and cope with government vacillation and media emotionalizing are going to cost big money.  It’s a good thing that government is in on the funding, after all – its one way to subsidize the major media and thrill the general populace.

Russell Finch of Alliance Nebraska developed an interest in geothermal heat in 1979, while planning the heating system for the family’s soon to be built A-frame house.  Mr. Finch wanted to use a heat pump as the only source of heating and cooling but found that heat pumps were not suitable for northern areas unless an additional electric heat unit was used.  At that time, now 30 years ago, heat pumps lost their efficiency at 32 °F, the temperature at which they switched over to electric.  While better now, a heat pump to run well below 32 °F is a serious investment.

Russell Finch Home & Greenhouse. Click image for the largest view.

Before it was widespread knowledge, Mr. Finch knew that throughout most of the United States, the temperature is stable at 52 degrees F at eight feet below ground.  He reasoned that if a heat pump was in a small room, and air that had passed through tubes buried eight feet deep was blown through that room, the heat pump would behave as if it were in a southern climate.  Mr. Finch contacted the University of Nebraska to validate his thought process, and was told by two professors that the idea was not feasible.  Not that the physics won’t work – just not feasible.

Finch than called the heating division of the Coleman Company in Kansas.  An engineer at Coleman listened to his idea and agreed it should work very well.  Coleman was interested enough to furnish a heat pump at dealer cost.  The unit was installed and has worked flawlessly without any alterations for years.  There’s a lesson in the stress involved when running heat pumps at low temperature.

The Finch designed heating and cooling system uses a 1/3 hp blower to move air in a closed circuit of underground tubing.  The tubing consists of seven 6″ diameter solid plastic tubes, with a total length of 1100 feet, buried along the perimeter of a portion of his home.  Whoa, that’s only about 1650 square feet of exposure for a two floor home of 4000 square feet. Intuition says that should do it.  Keep in mind some subsoil pipe footage is being used to heat the garage. More on that in a bit.

Finch Geothermal Home Layout. Click image for more info.

Just how this might apply to you depends on climate.  Mr. Finch is located at Alliance Nebraska where the average high temperature is 36 degrees and the average low is 10.7 °F.  Typically, 20 days per year are below zero degrees F.   In July, the average high is 87 °F, with several days above 100 °F.  Twice since the Finch’s have lived in the home, the temperatures have plummeted to minus 40 °F.

On the other hand – Mr. Finch has a 16’ x 80’ greenhouse as well.  Add to that Mr. Finch isn’t terribly interested in promoting his know how.  There is but a paucity of information. The available numbers for annual costs include the home and greenhouse are from March of 2001.  Add in he’s irrigating over an acre of lawn, the water and power total comes to $2400 in 2001 dollars.  Lets see, living area, garage, greenhouse, that’s passing 5500 square feet.  Yet there is one other input – the solar gain with all those windows is going to be massive.

Finch Geothermal Home Circulation. Click image for more information.

We have no good idea what the value of the system calculates out to be.

But Finch has two other projects behind him. The results of which are unknown.  He used to offer his know how in a booklet for $12.95.  Currently a downloadable e-book is on sale promoted by the GreenCube Publishing, a division of ISBU Association, Inc. for $24.00. Curiously the publisher is offering a “demo” that offers up the first pages. But nowhere is the math and physics worked out.  Mr. Finch and his publisher would do quite well to get that information into the demo and the in highlights on their website.

Most folks assume that liquid is more efficient than gas for a circulator in a cycle.  That’s a case begging for proof in a cost analysis.  The up front investment, operating expense and maintenance are primary considerations.  Handling fluids is more demanding, in power to move fluids and the cost to build leak proof systems.  Air would need cleaning when incoming, the circulating system some means to evacuate condensed humidity and cleaning the pipes of the stuff that will make a home there.  Neither system is perfect.

Yet the power to move the air is a fraction of the power to move antifreeze and water.  An air to air heat exchange system is flat simple, and one might suspect Finch is dumping outbound flow straight into the home for air conditioning, only adding some heat pump heat exchange in the cool and cold season.  Air to air to geothermal looks very attractive compared to air to water to geothermal on sunk investment and operating costs.

Now if Finch and the publisher will “show us the beef” as it were, one could get real interested.  But you have to be just smiling proud of Russell.  All that’s needed is for someone to figure out a low cost way to put these kinds of things in suburbia-sized lots.

The answer is fundamental.  It’s the cost to get to the heat source.  In geologically active areas of the world like Iceland, Indonesia, and Chile the heat is very close to the surface requiring low access costs.  Iceland can take advantage of this low-hanging energy by directly circulating that heat from naturally occurring hot fluids through buildings for heating.  While there is heat to had for the taking across much of the planet’s land surface area – it’s not so easy as the heat is found deeper.

But geothermal is impervious to weather conditions. That independence means it provides excellent base load electricity.  Geothermal is going to grow, here’s why.

Using enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) that are in development now will offer two major advancements.  First are hot rocks that are artificially fractured, perhaps even at great depths.  Then water, other fluids and perhaps gases are injected to contact the hot rocks and then drawn back to the surface where the heat energy is captured and used to generate electricity.  So far, these are very expensive ventures, with costs in excess of $10 million dollars.  That’s ten times the cost of a conventional shallow geothermal well, 2 to 5 times the cost of a shale formation natural gas well.  It’s a major investment.

It’s worth it though. In Australia, a relatively advanced EGS experimental systems in granites produces high heat due to radioactive decay at depths greater than 3 km, are seen as viable geothermal reservoirs.  In fact for South Australia alone, some 23 companies have filed for licenses covering 110,000 sq km where suitable hot granite is believed to exist at accessible depths. The key there is once the system is built on a good site it will be tapped into a constant, virtually limitless supply of energy that’s available without cost.  The investments are in getting to the heat and the plant to handle it.  As more plants are built and improved from experience the investment and operating costs will come down.

The second advancement is binary geothermal power plants (BGPP).  These are plants that intersect the heat flow with a heat exchanger simplifying the management of the circulating fluids back and forth to the hot rock.  Then on the other side of the heat exchanger a closed system will move the heat and extract it into energy forms such as electricity.  The closed system allows highly refined engineering, optimized heat management and avoidance of introducing a wealth of contaminates from the deep circulating fluids into high speed or finely tuned metering machinery.   More costly to build, but much less costly to operate, BGPP offers reduced operating expenses.  Small units are already in use with larger units likely to be announced soon.

Are the watt on grid costs worth it?  Pawing through the U.S. Energy Commission site shows coal and natural gas are getting to the grid at about 4¢ to 5¢/kWhr.  Other pages show BGPP at about 6.5¢/kWhr.  How good those numbers are is debateable, but its very early in the geothermal industry, there are several problems to work out, yet the energy itself in the form of heat is free it you can get there.

In the renewable energy field geothermal clubs solar and wind senseless. There is no dependency on daylight or weather; the heat energy is there 24 hours a day 365 days each year for years.  The dependable electricity production makes it easy for geothermal companies to entice long-term energy agreements without concerns about underproduction or wasting over production.

The capital costs will come down, solar has gotten cheaper to make but installations at commercial scale are stunningly expensive.  Solar can get to $10,000 per kWhr and wind up to $3,000 per kWhr.  Geothermal can get to $3,000 per kWhr but runs 24/365, nearly a three-fold advantage over wind.  Those geothermal costs compare to suggestions about coal-fired facilities costs that must include some capture carbon.

More interesting is that geothermal needs less land than solar or wind, and permitting would be easier than coal or nuclear as the hazards are not there.

For the hard nosed green eyeshade types geothermal offers high load factors, the difference between the rated capacity and the actual production.  Wind tops out at 40% and solar even less.  But geothermal competes with nuclear when good engineering gets to 90% production.

For “green tech” geothermal is the top prospect for long-term growth. While geothermal is centuries behind wind progress and hidden behind the solar excitement, geothermal could compete head on with coal, natural gas and nuclear as the technological improvements come into use.  Meanwhile the U.S. government is pouring incentives, funding opportunities and subsidies into renewables.  Check the Geothermal Org site here.

It won’t be long now, the main issues are boring into hot hard rock and the fracturing issues, and research money is out and more is coming.  The above groundwork is pretty much on the shelf or needs scaling up.  The down hole work will get solved.  After all, the prize is bigger and better than an oil well.