There's a new post on the National Geographic web site as part of a series on energy, that is generally upbeat about geothermal energy but misses a good part of the story. Author David LaGesse focuses on hydrothermal energy with a brief discussion of Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) and concludes there are limited areas with surface or shallow steam.
He misses the exciting developments in low-temperature power production, and ignores the long history and widespread applications of direct-use and ground-source heat pumps.
There's a lot more to geothermal energy than just geysers.
As a reminder, AZGS is leading an effort among the Association of American State Geologists (AASG) to deploy the National Geothermal Data System in all 50 states and populate it with key data for geothermal exploration. The project is creating a national, distributed data system (not a central data base) that will be free to users.
Geothermal power requires no fuel, except for pumps, and is therefore immune to fuel cost fluctuations. Geothermal power is highly scalable: from a rural village to an entire city.
ReplyDeleteNicely explained! - I checked out Wiki on this and it don't contain nearly as good data - thanks a lot
ReplyDelete