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117 comments on Low Temperature Geothermal Power
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117 comments on Low Temperature Geothermal Power
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GAIA Host Collective
Sorry, I accidently downrated your comment. I had a quick look at the MIT report and it sounds wonderfully encouraging. Thank-you.
What about the rate of heat exhaustion? Will power plants have to relocate to a higher quality site over the heat resource (reserve?) after some decades, centuries, millenia?
Yes. I took a class with Professor Tester, and he explained that the primary issues are flow rate, governed by the permeance of the fractured rock. Where you are mining for heat, you will create a local cool pocket, which will take a long time to regenerate due to natural processes. So, if the area you drill in is made up of very dense non-porous rock, the volume of accessible water around the mine may be limited. He taked about it in terms of a "decades" lifespan for a typical mine, but I would assume that the lifespan would be more than linearly decreased as the power drawn increases.
Thanks for your response. Are there studies comparing the energetic and material costs of construction, maintenance and operation of these power plants with other 'non-polluting' power systems? Any leads?
There was a considerable program on Geothermal in the U.S. back during the last energy crisis. The Hot Dry Rock program got a lot of attention, but there were some significant drawbacks. There were, at the time, lots of reports; I must have dumped at some stage several drawer fulls (Moving offices). Sadly it was before digital records of such things, and the old reports may not be widely available any longer.