NEW GEOTHERMAL RISING

100 GW Of US Geothermal Power Will Push US Past Gas

Tina Casey, July 18, 2014 (Clean Technica)

“Natural gas has been having a field day…but it looks like the sleeping giant of US geothermal power is being nudged out of its stupor…[The Energy Department]…is plunking down $31 million to rev up a cutting edge geothermal demo project [called FORGE, for Frontier Observatory for Research in Geothermal Energy,] that could enable the US to tap into an estimated 100 gigawatts of geothermal power…The idea is to tap into areas underground where the rocks are hot, but the heat doesn’t have a natural way up to the surface…[It is] called an Enhanced Geothermal System. Ideally, an ESG would create pathways that enable fluid to circulate efficiently through rock, and return to the surface piping hot…[by drilling] into the target area, and then injecting water at high pressure and/or heat to split the rock…[With a ‘fracture network’ and a production well, returning water should be hot enough to transition to steam at the surface or] to heat another fluid to produce vapor…for running a turbine…[ESG construction would not likely lead to the widespread environmental impacts of the natural gas industry in states with weak regulations because] ESG lends itself to the kind of large scale, centralized installations that could fall under federal jurisdiction.” click here for more

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