Geothermal.. coming your way?

The World is slowing realising wind and solar are the cheapest, proven form of energy available, needing no drilling or transportation or in need of wars to maintain access. It offers to many the ability have energy independence and free of the rip off energy costs of fossil fuels and planet wrecking pollution. Reliable and viable storage systems are also evolving at pace.

But what comes next?

I think geothermal will rapidly rise in prominence even to a position of energy dominance.

At the moment the main limitation is ease of drilling both on domestic premises (45m to 120m for vertical heat pump systems and 1.2m to 1.8 for horizontal closed loop systems), and for larger scale power generation up to 3km and increasing.

But the world is working had to solve the drilling issues. Also, when the fossil fuel industry finally realise that their business model includes being good at drilling they will jump on it to survive.

The following article looks at domestic geothermal and shows a highly innovative drilling solution with a working prototype and the work on going to make it more robust and commercial. Here is the link to the excellent youtube video on this latest technology.

On the power generation geothermal again a lot is happening to go deeper. Imagine drilling next to an existing steam driven power station and having access to essentially free energy. (For example the Quaise Energy deep drilling project to over 19,000m.. yes 19km / 12 miles!).