* Astronomy

Blobrana · L

RE: Geothermal energy

Blobrana · L

UK in talks with Iceland over 'volcanic power link'

The UK is to hold talks with Iceland about harnessing the power of its volcanoes to import energy.
Ministers are discussing the idea of building a giant undersea cable to pump some of Iceland's plentiful supply of geothermal energy to the UK.
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Blobrana · L

Project to Pour Water Into Volcano to Make Power

Geothermal energy developers plan to pump 24 million gallons of water into the side of a dormant volcano in Central Oregon this summer to demonstrate new technology they hope will give a boost to a green energy sector that has yet to live up to its promise.
They hope the water comes back to the surface fast enough and hot enough to create cheap, clean electricity that isn't dependent on sunny skies or stiff breezes - without shaking the earth and rattling the nerves of nearby residents.
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They say that even in the dead of a Yellowknife winter, workers at the old Con mine on the edge of the city used to come up from the depths dressed in T-shirts and shorts due to the heat of the bedrock.
Now the northern capital is considering using that heat to extract a different kind of gold from the defunct mine - cheap, greenhouse gas-free energy to warm its buildings on frigid Arctic nights. Early in 2008, Yellowknife will begin studying what could eventually become Canada's first large-scale geothermal heat plant.

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A source of geothermal energy found in County Antrim could have the potential to provide heat and electricity for Northern Ireland's towns and cities.
Scientists have discovered a subterranean water source 3,000 metres under Larne which reaches temperatures close to boiling point.
The energy source was found during the Tellus Project, which was undertaken to assess the potential of Northern Ireland's natural resources.

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The search for "hot rocks" in Tasmania is expanding.
The State Government yesterday announced two new exploration licences for geothermal energy would be granted.
The news comes weeks after Tasmanian company KUTh Energy launched its prospectus for raising $7.5 million to fund its own search for hot rock energy in the northeast.

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When tremors started cracking walls and bathroom tiles in this Swiss city on the Rhine, the engineers knew they had a problem.

"The glass vases on the shelf rattled, and there was a loud bang. I thought a truck had crashed into the building" - Catherine Wueest, a teashop owner, recalls.

But the 3.4 magnitude tremor on the evening of Dec. 8 was no ordinary act of nature: It had been accidentally triggered by engineers drilling deep into the Earth's crust to tap its inner heat and thus break new ground - literally - in the world's search for new sources of energy.
Basel was wrecked by an earthquake in 1365, and no tremor, man-made or other, is to be taken lightly. After more, slightly smaller tremors followed, Basel authorities told Geopower Basel to put its project on hold.
But the power company hasn't given up. It's in a race with a firm in Australia to be the first to generate power commercially by boiling water on the rocks three miles underground.
On paper, the Basel project looks fairly straightforward: Drill down, shoot cold water into the shaft and bring it up again superheated and capable of generating enough power through a steam turbine to meet the electricity needs of 10,000 households, and heat 2,700 homes.
Scientists say this geothermal energy, clean, quiet and virtually inexhaustible, could fill the world's annual needs 250,000 times over with nearly zero impact on the climate or the environment.
A study released this year by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said if 40 percent of the heat under the United States could be tapped, it would meet demand 56,000 times over. It said an investment of $800 million to $1 billion could produce more than 100 gigawatts of electricity by 2050, equalling the combined output of all 104 nuclear power plants in the U.S.

"The resource base for geothermal is enormous" - Professor Jefferson Tester, the study's lead author.

But there are drawbacks - not just earthquakes but cost. A so-called hot rock well three miles deep in the United States would cost $7 million to $8 million, according to the MIT study. The average cost of drilling an oil well in the U.S. in 2004 was $1.44 million, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Also, rocks tapped by drilling would lose their heat after a few decades and new wells would have to be drilled elsewhere.
Bryan Mignone, an energy and climate-change specialist with the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., said alternative sources of energy face stiff price competition.

"Currently in the U.S. new technologies in the power sector are competing against coal, which is very cheap".

Humans have used heat from the earth for thousands of years. The ancient Romans drew on hot springs for bathing and heating their homes. Geothermal energy is in use in 24 countries, including the U.S.
But those sources - geysers and hot springs - are close to the surface. Hot dry rock technology, also called "enhanced geothermal systems" or EGS, drills down to where the layers of granite are close to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. The equipment is similar to that used for oil, but needs to go much deeper, and be wider to accommodate the water cycle.
Hot dry rock technology is meant to stay well away from the 99 percent of the Earth's interior that is over 1,000 degrees.
Aeneas Wanner, a Swiss expert, says that if you imagine Earth as an egg, "a bore hole would only scratch the shell of the egg a little bit."

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