Geothermal Energy: Wishful Thinking?

The concept of extracting and using heat energy from within the Earth (geothermal energy) will not go away. In theory the amount of energy available is nearly infinite. However, as is so often the case, "the devil is in the details". Yes, the heat is there, but can it be used in a safe and economic way? In most cases geothermal energy remains a dream, but one that is being increasingly funded by a science and integrity-challenged Obama Administration. Stay tuned.
Peter

Could New Clean Energy Source Trigger Quakes?

Theunis Bates Contributor Source

LONDON (Dec. 18) -- The Obama administration has a lot riding on geothermal energy, which it sees as a future source of clean, green and virtually unlimited electricity. Over the past year alone, the U.S. Department of Energy has invested some $440 million in projects trying to turn heat trapped in bedrock deep underground into electricity. But the trial this week of a Swiss geologist – accused of causing earthquakes during the construction of a geothermal power plant – has raised doubts about the safety of some geothermal schemes, and may have contributed to the collapse of one government-backed project in California earlier this month.

Worries about the link between this new power source and earthquakes came to the fore in 2006, when the building of a geothermal plant in the Swiss city of Basel triggered a series of tremors. Although no one was injured, the quakes caused $9 million in damage and seriously shook the locals. On Tuesday, Swiss prosecutors opened their case against Markus Haering – head of Geothermal Explorers, the firm behind the project – who they accuse of deliberately causing landslides and damage to property. He denies all charges and could face up to five years in prison if found guilty.

When construction of the geothermal plant began in 2006, few residents of Basel, a prosperous city on the border with France and Germany, would have believed it would end in earthquakes and court cases. Residents were told that a new, cutting-edge technology known as an enhanced geothermal system would be used to create enough power for 10,000 homes.

Manny Crisostomo, Sacramento Bee / ZUMA Press

An ambitious project to tap geothermal power at The Geysers in northern California was suspended after reports of earthquakes at a similar project in Switzerland.

Traditional geothermal plants tap water trapped in hot rocks relatively near the surface. The Basel project aimed to harness the energy from a hot layer located three miles below the city made of water-free, impermeable rock. To generate power, Basel would have to pump water down a deep borehole. On reaching the layer of superheated rocks, the water would turn to steam, race back to the surface and be used to spin electricity-generating turbines. Leftover hot water would heat nearby homes.

The first stages of the project went smoothly. By December 2006 the well had been drilled and Geopower Basel was starting to pump in pressurized cold water, which was supposed to open up fractures in the rock, creating pores for water to run through. It was then that Basel started to suffer the shakes -- the greatest of which was recorded at a house-moving 3.4 on the Richter scale -- forcing the company to stop pumping.

Paul Younger, a professor of energy and environment at Britain's Newcastle University, says that it's not unusual for much smaller tremors to be felt on the surface when pressurized water is forced into rock deep underground. But, he adds, the process is normally only carried out in seismically stable areas, as the shakes caused by hydro-fracturing can interact with existing deep faults and cause larger trembles.

And Basel is anything but stable. The city has a long history of quakes and was all but wiped out in 1356 by an estimated magnitude 6.5 earthquake – the largest ever known to have occurred in Western Europe. "What they were doing was actually fairly conventional," Younger says. "It's where they were doing it that was unconventional. If you go drilling and stimulating near a known active fault, you're asking for trouble."

The Basel plant, which was finally closed on Dec. 10, didn't just cause trouble in Switzerland. On Dec. 11, U.S. firm AltaRock Energy shut down a California geothermal project known as the Geysers that was based on a similar design as Basel. The Energy Department – which supplied $6 million in funding – had been investigating the project's safety following reports by federal officials that the company had failed to supply sufficient information about the Basel quakes when applying for the go-ahead. But AltaRock also had other serious engineering problems at the site: It couldn't break through shallow formations known as caprock to reach the hot strata.

Experts accept that the closure of Basel and the Geysers is a setback for geothermal power. But, says Colin Williams, a research geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey, neither closure "is a showstopper." He says the technology behind projects such as Basel is still at a relatively "early stage." And while he has no doubts it will eventually be advanced enough to use in urban areas, "it's wiser that we do this in less sensitive locations at the moment, so then we can build up a series of case histories."

Younger believes a key advantage geothermal holds over most green energy sources – that it can be on 24 hours a day – means new projects will continue to spring up around the world. "It's not dependent on wind, tide or sunlight," he explains. "That means that it can deliver baseload power much like an ordinary fossil-fuel power plant." Or possibly more. According to a 2007 Energy Department report, advanced geothermal power in the U.S. could – at least in theory – produce up to a staggering 60,000 times the country's current annual energy usage.

That explains why Switzerland and the United States still have the hots for geothermal, despite the Basel quakes. AltaRock has received some $25 million in U.S. government funding to start a new project in Oregon, and the Energy Department is backing more than 120 geothermal initiatives across several states. Engineers in Zurich, meanwhile, started drilling last month to see whether the area was suitable for a new scheme. Geothermal, it seems, could still shake up the world. But in a good way.

Filed under: Nation, World, Tech

More Taxpayer's Money Wasted By Government: Geothermal Energy Failure

I could say I "told-ya so". Economic, large-scale geothermal energy production is an illusion, promoted by many of the same environmental "do-gooders" who have brought us the man-caused global warming fiasco. If this was being done only with private funding there would be little cause for concern. If it was free enterprise at work to harness heat energy from within the Earth, it could be applauded. However, this is largely taxpayer's money being wasted and we should be aware of it.

In light of the ClimateGate scandal and the tremendous amount of money being wasted on the myth of man-caused global warming, we must second-guess and carefully scrutinize everything the Government does. They seem almost completely out-of-touch with reality and are locked into an ever-increasing mode of tax-spend, tax-spend. Will this go on until America is economically bled-dry, like the former Soviet Union?
Peter



Geothermal Project in California Is Shut Down

By JAMES GLANZ (source)

The company in charge of a California project to extract vast amounts of renewable energy from deep, hot bedrock has removed its drill rig and informed federal officials that the government project will be abandoned.

The project by the company, AltaRock Energy, was the Obama administration’s first major test of geothermal energy as a significant alternative to fossil fuels and the project was being financed with federal Department of Energy money at a site about 100 miles north of San Francisco called the Geysers.

But on Friday, the Energy Department said that AltaRock had given notice this week that “it will not be continuing work at the Geysers” as part of the agency’s geothermal development program.

The project’s apparent collapse comes a day after Swiss government officials permanently shut down a similar project in Basel, because of the damaging earthquakes it produced in 2006 and 2007. Taken together, the two setbacks could change the direction of the Obama administration’s geothermal program, which had raised hopes that the earth’s bedrock could be quickly tapped as a clean and almost limitless energy source.

The Energy Department referred other questions about the project’s shutdown to AltaRock, a startup company based in Seattle. Reached by telephone, the company’s chief operations officer, James T. Turner, confirmed that the rig had been removed but said he had not been informed of the notice that the company had given the government. Two other senior company officials did not respond to requests for comment, and it was unclear whether AltaRock might try to restart the project with private money.

In addition to a $6 million grant from the Energy Department, AltaRock had attracted some $30 million in venture capital from high-profile investors like Google, Khosla Ventures and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

“Some of these startup companies got out in front and convinced some venture capitalists that they were very close to commercial deployment,” said Daniel P. Schrag, a professor of geology and director of the Center for the Environment at Harvard University.

Geothermal enthusiasts asserted that drilling miles into hard rock, as required by the technique, could be done quickly and economically with small improvements in existing methods, Professor Schrag said. “What we’ve discovered is that it’s harder to make those improvements than some people believed,” he added.

In fact, AltaRock immediately ran into snags with its drilling, repeatedly snapping off bits in shallow formations called caprock. The project’s safety was also under review at the Energy Department after federal officials said the company had not been entirely forthcoming about the earthquakes produced in Basel in making the case for the Geysers project.

The results of that review have not yet been announced, but the type of geothermal energy explored in Basel and at the Geysers requires fracturing the bedrock then circulating water through the cracks to produce steam. By its nature, fracturing creates earthquakes, though most of them are small.

On Friday, the Energy Department, which has put some $440 million into its geothermal program this year alone, said that despite the latest developments, it remained confident of the technology’s long-term prospects. Many geothermal methods do not require drilling so deep or fracturing bedrock.

“The Department of Energy believes that geothermal energy holds enormous potential to heat our homes and power our economy while decreasing our carbon pollution,” said Stephanie Mueller, a spokeswoman.

AltaRock has also received some $25 million in federal money for a project in Oregon, and some scientists speculated on Friday that after the spate of problems at the Geysers, the company wanted to focus on a new site.

But the company, whose project at the Geysers was located on land leased from the federal government by the Northern California Power Agency, has held information about its project tightly. Not even the power agency has been informed of AltaRock’s ultimate intentions at the site, said Murray Grande, who is in charge of geothermal facilities for the agency.

“They just probably gave up, but we don’t know,” Mr. Grande said. “We have nothing official from them at all.”

But a resident of the nearby town of Anderson Springs, which is already shaken by quakes generated by less ambitious geothermal projects, reacted with jubilation when told it appeared the new project was ending.

“How I feel is beyond anything that words can express,” said the resident, Jacque Felber, who added that an unnerving quake had rattled her property the night before. “I’m just so relieved, because with this going on, I’m afraid one of these days it’s going to knock my house off the hill.”

Geothermal Energy

Geothermal energy is (again) being touted as a solution to the nation's and the world's energy needs. Here is a summary of a report recently completed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, (MIT). I'd like to hear from geologists and engineers about the feasibility of large-scale geothermal energy production.
Peter

from: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/geothermal.html


MIT-led panel backs heat mining' as key U.S. energy source
January 22, 2007
A comprehensive new MIT-led study of the potential for geothermal energy within the United States has found that mining the huge amounts of heat that reside as stored thermal energy in the Earth's hard rock crust could supply a substantial portion of the electricity the United States will need in the future, probably at competitive prices and with minimal environmental impact.
An 18-member panel led by MIT prepared the 400-plus page study, titled "The Future of Geothermal Energy" (PDF, 14.1 MB). Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, it is the first study in some 30 years to take a new look at geothermal, an energy resource that has been largely ignored.

The goal of the study was to assess the feasibility, potential environmental impacts and economic viability of using enhanced geothermal system (EGS) technology to greatly increase the fraction of the U.S. geothermal resource that could be recovered commercially.
Although geothermal energy is produced commercially today and the United States is the world's biggest producer, existing U.S. plants have focused on the high-grade geothermal systems primarily located in isolated regions of the west. This new study takes a more ambitious look at this resource and evaluates its potential for much larger-scale deployment.
"We've determined that heat mining can be economical in the short term, based on a global analysis of existing geothermal systems, an assessment of the total U.S. resource and continuing improvements in deep-drilling and reservoir stimulation technology," said panel head Jefferson W. Tester, the H. P. Meissner Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT.

"EGS technology has already been proven to work in the few areas where underground heat has been successfully extracted. And further technological improvements can be expected," he said.
The expert panel offers a number of recommendations to develop geothermal as a major electricity supplier for the nation. These include more detailed and site-specific assessments of the U.S. geothermal resource and a multiyear federal commitment to demonstrate the concept in the field at commercial scale.

The new assessment of geothermal energy by energy experts, geologists, drilling specialists and others is important for several key reasons, Tester said.
First, fossil fuels--coal, oil and natural gas--are increasingly expensive and consumed in ever-increasing amounts. Second, oil and gas imports from foreign sources raise concerns over long-term energy security. Third, burning fossil fuels dumps carbon dioxide and other pollutants into the atmosphere. Finally, heat mining has the potential to supply a significant amount of the country's electricity currently being generated by conventional fossil fuel, hydroelectric and nuclear plants.The study shows that drilling several wells to reach hot rock and connecting them to a fractured rock region that has been stimulated to let water flow through it creates a heat-exchanger that can produce large amounts of hot water or steam to run electric generators at the surface. Unlike conventional fossil-fuel power plants that burn coal, natural gas or oil, no fuel would be required. And unlike wind and solar systems, a geothermal plant works night and day, offering a non-interruptible source of electric power.

Prof. Tester and panel member David Blackwell, professor of geophysics at Southern Methodist University in Texas, also point out that geothermal resources are available nationwide, although the highest-grade sites are in western states, where hot rocks are closer to the surface, requiring less drilling and thus lowering costs.

The panel also evaluated the environmental impacts of geothermal development, concluding that these are "markedly lower than conventional fossil-fuel and nuclear power plants."
"This environmental advantage is due to low emissions and the small overall footprint of the entire geothermal system, which results because energy capture and extraction is contained entirely underground, and the surface equipment needed for conversion to electricity is relatively compact," Tester said.

The report also notes that meeting water requirements for geothermal plants may be an issue, particularly in arid regions. Further, the potential for seismic risk needs to be carefully monitored and managed.According to panel member M. Nafi Toksöz, professor of geophysics at MIT, "geothermal energy could play an important role in our national energy picture as a non-carbon-based energy source. It's a very large resource and has the potential to be a significant contributor to the energy needs of this country."

Toksöz added that the electricity produced annually by geothermal energy systems now in use in the United States at sites in California, Hawaii, Utah and Nevada is comparable to that produced by solar and wind power combined. And the potential is far greater still, since hot rocks below the surface are available in most parts of the United States.
Even in the most promising areas, however, drilling must reach depths of 5,000 feet or more in the west, and much deeper in the eastern United States. Still, "the possibility of drilling into these rocks, fracturing them and pumping water in to produce steam has already been shown to be feasible," Toksöz said.

Panel member Brian Anderson, an assistant professor at West Virginia University, noted that the drilling and reservoir technologies used to mine heat have many similarities to those used for extracting oil and gas. As a result, the geothermal industry today is well connected technically to two industry giants in the energy arena, oil and gas producers and electric power generators. With increasing demand for technology advances to produce oil and gas more effectively and to generate electricity with minimal carbon and other emissions, an opportunity exists to accelerate the development of EGS by increased investments by these two industries.
Government-funded research into geothermal was very active in the 1970s and early 1980s. As oil prices declined in the mid-1980s, enthusiasm for alternative energy sources waned, and funding for research on renewable energy and energy efficiency (including geothermal) was greatly reduced, making it difficult for geothermal technology to advance. "Now that energy concerns have resurfaced, an opportunity exists for the U.S. to pursue the EGS option aggressively to meet long-term national needs," Tester observed.

Tester and colleagues emphasize that federally funded engineering research and development must still be done to lower risks and encourage investment by early adopters. Of particular importance is to demonstrate that EGS technology is scalable and transferable to sites in different geologic settings.

In its report, the panel recommends that:
More detailed and site-specific assessments of the U.S. geothermal energy resource should be conducted.
Field trials running three to five years at several sites should be done to demonstrate commercial-scale engineered geothermal systems.
The shallow, extra-hot, high-grade deposits in the west should be explored and tested first.
Other geothermal resources such as co-produced hot water associated with oil and gas production and geopressured resources should also be pursued as short-term options.
On a longer time scale, deeper, lower-grade geothermal deposits should be explored and tested.
Local and national policies should be enacted that encourage geothermal development.
A multiyear research program exploring subsurface science and geothermal drilling and energy conversion should be started, backed by constant analysis of results.

Besides Tester, Blackwell, Toksöz and Anderson, members of the panel include: geomechanics expert Anthony Batchelor, managing director of GeoScience Ltd. in the United Kingdom; reservoir engineer Roy Baria from the United Kingdom; geophysicists Maria Richards and Petru Negraru at Southern Methodist University; mechanical engineer Ronald DiPippo, an emeritus professor at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth; risk analyst Elisabeth Drake at MIT; chemist John Garnish, former director of geothermal programs of the European Commission; drilling expert Bill Livesay; economist Michal Moore at the University of Calgary in Canada, former California energy commissioner and chief economist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory; commercial power conversion engineer Kenneth Nichols; geothermal industry expert Susan Petty; and petroleum engineering consultant Ralph Veatch Jr. Additional project support came from Chad Augustine, Enda Murphy and Gwen Wilcox at MIT.