I've been looking to write about geothermal energy for a while, but just haven't been able to find a good article to start it off, but today I found this article that I found pretty interesting. It is about Iceland's geothermal production, and how they plan to export the energy to mainland Europe. I knew that Iceland was a big user of geothermal energy, but I did not know that they used it to produce 81% of their electricity!!Geothermal energy works by using the natural heat from Earth to heat water or another working fluid, and then the fluid is used to turn a turbine which turns a generator to produce electricity. It is not very efficient, only being at 10-25%, but as it uses heat from the Earth's core, it is a renewable source of energy, which makes it appealing. The figure to the left shows the basic dry steam plant, which takes geothermal steam directly to turn the turbines and produce electricity.
Currently, the United States is the world's largest producer of geothermal energy with a capacity of 3,086 MW per year, but it only accounts for 0.3% of the electricity produced in the U.S. Hopefully some of the money attributed to renewable energies in the budget, so that we can expand even more with geothermal energy.
Correct me if I am wrong, but it seems the geothermal energy can only be produced in certain locations. These would be places that it is easy to access the heat of the Earth. In Iceland, there is a lot of volcanic activity that makes it easy to produce geothermal power. On the other hand, here in Colorado it is not so easy. I don't know the last time that you just saw a volcano erupting around here!
ReplyDeleteThe west coast definitely has the potential to produce geothermal power, but again, the production of geothermal power is extremely limited to locations where it is possible. I can't really see the amount of geothermal activity increasing in the near future.