Geothermal - Unlimited Energy

As a general rule, the Earth gets 1 degree warmer for every 60 feet of depth. That means that at 30,00 feet the earth is 500 degrees F.

Previous attempts to harness this have been expensive except where the temperature is ABOVE the general rule and is hotter at a closer depth. Such as Iceland: www.os.is...
and elsewhere: www.etfinancial.com...

Now note what is being done by the Swiss: www.dhm.ch...

This technology and others like it might or, since it incorporates drilling technologies, might not be seen as a threat to the established energy companies.

Now a little on sideways drilling, for which one should simply Google the phrase "sideways drilling" which is just a relatively new way to drill dependably sideways into an oil or gas zone deep underground to access much more of it instead of just "punching" through it. For a good view see www.oilfield.slb.com...

However, if you search Google for BOTH "sideways drilling" AND geothermal, you see no one is currently working on the combination of the two.

One or two deep wells could each supply a very large neighborhood (thousands of homes) with near unlimited winter heating capacity.

New technologies are promising IF THEY ARE RESEARCHED AND USED.

If this idea is new then let's use it

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'Unlimited Energy' is at best a Stupid phrase.

It is unlimited the way the Earth's forests were 100 years ago.
It is unlimited the way the Fish of the ocean were 100 years ago.

A little clue,
Look at dead Mars, that may have once harbored life,
It lost the heat of its molten core and thereby lost its magnetic field, In turn it lost its atmosphere.

So if you can get by without breathing and don't mind lots of solar and Universal radiation on you then by all means use the Earth's internal heat all you want.

I am sure some development will take place, But we should be looking at other possibilities.

There are NO FREE LUNCHES. PERIOD.
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In theory, "Theory and practice are the same."

In practice, they're different.

Yes, nothing's unlimited and all power sources can be prematurely drained. That much is true.

And slavish devotion to over-reliance on draining the earth's heat, combined with some sort of near-future huge economic expansion based on abundant geothermal energy could indeed be harmful. Just because your scenario is science-fictional doesn't mean it's not valid.
As far as I can tell, all alternative power sources produce heat. You are correct to suggest that this in itself may be a problem. But I still think geothermal has some huge advantages over hydrocarbon combustion.

The heat-energy that's there in the earth, however, is right now possibly more intriguing in a cleaner, buy-us-some-time sense, than the future of oil. Which is more of the same, costing more and getting worse as time goes by.


[edit on 5/1/2005 by Noumenon]

[edit on 5/1/2005 by Noumenon]

While you're definitly right about ther being no free lunches and that massive use of geothermal power may have unpredictable and disasterous results it wouldn't cause a loss of atmosphere. Mars lost it's atmostphere due to insufficient mass not a loss in it's magnetic field. Also Sideways drilling wouldn't allow you access to more power relative to simply continuing down, also note that the complications of drilling deep are not by any means small. Geothermal power away from these shallow points just becomes untenable, due to the difficulty of getting that deep and the small scale of it all. Especially in the drilling proccess a lot of oil would be used too making it a useless solution after peak oil hits, when most if not all actions is likly to take place.

Now our energy sources are for the most part oil and gas, coal, nuclear, and hydro.

They use oil and gas for certain operations in a nuclear power plant (emergency control-power generators, for example.)

They use diesel generators in coal mines.

They use nuclear-generated electricity in oil refineries.

It's all linked up. The grid is designed for redundance, too.

Corn alcohol is in our gasoline.

Liquid fuels, or gasses such as hydrogen, are manufacturable by using the other sources if need be. Just like the garbage fuels mentioned on other threads. Transportation fuels need to be lightweight to compete with gasoline, and that's about it. The technology exists for alternate energy conversion to standard infrastructures. It's the energy itself that's the problem. The nuclear equation STILL has not owned up to inevitable disposal costs. Thus the problem, and the explanation about why we haven't gone nuclear. Even the pro-nuke people get uneasy when they look at the actual numbers and costs for permanent, moderate disposal. We can ignore political considerations when talking theory. We can posit de-facto revolutions to allow common sense to occur. Even so, we need new energy sources. That's a fact.

As far as "Why sideways?" it's because for every down you need an up, and if you try to combine the hot coming up and the cold going down, in a simple vertical hole, you'll find a situation your accountants won't like: loss of power.



[edit on 5/1/2005 by Noumenon]

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please look at this, Amur Tiger,

Earth is shielded from the solar wind by a magnetic bubble

Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft supports a long-held suspicion that much of the Red Planet's atmosphere was simply blown away -- by the solar wind.

NASA: The Solar Wind at Mars
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