Alternative Energy

[den]

I wonder how viable Hot Dry Rock Geothermal Energy is. It looks do-able with the technology we have now. According to the article they showed on Beyond Tomorrow, South Australia has a heat reserve equivalent to half the Kuwaiti oil reserves.

Which is nice.

Comments

[annbat.livejournal.com]

One thing that is over-looked is that most of your real energy needs involve low grade heat (heat and cool your house, hot water for showers and dishes, even heat for your cooking and most industrial processes). All those temperatures can be gathered by air-heating solar panels and stored in insulated dirt just a few feet below the surface (so plants can be grown on top and appropriate drainage provided to prevent rain water "washing" the heat out of the storage below). With a few air pipes, parking lots and black roofs can be turned into big solar panals.

This can all be done by amatures with low-tech materials so government people think "too good to be true" and business people think "no priority product = no money" and research people think "no interest = no grant money".

It surprises me that they are using very ineffiecient methods of converting the energy into power (use water expantion and the forget steam with all that energy in the conversion, they are using water as the transfer medium for temperatures aroud 200 degrees Celcius - too high for even "dry" steam).

[annbat.livejournal.com]

and I forgot to mention that for house heating and cooling, you do not even need solar panels...just store the heat and cool from the outside air for a few months (easy with all that mass under your house)