‘Breakthrough’ geothermal tech produces 3.5 megawatts of carbon-free power | Fervo Energy’s Nevada site is slated to power Google data centers.::An energy company called Fervo says it has achieved a breakthrough in geothermal technology.
We’re gonna need this technology for our cities underground once they release the ai and it takes over the surface. We should probably cover the sky so the ai doesn’t use solar power.
Good idea, hopefully they don’t just turn humans into terribly inefficient batteries that make literally no sense
Haha the original idea of using our brains for processing power made way more sense.
Wowa slow down there Copper Top!
Is someone about to be murdered by the CIA?
If this proves to be a viable alternative energy source, it will employ most of the extant petro-industry. This is a win for the status quo economically speaking
I may be reading this wrong, but am I the only one for whom this sounds a lot like fracking, minus the gas extraction? I’d be curious to see the knock-on effects in the surrounding area.
Hopefully I’m wrong, because I feel like this could be a pretty big leap for energy generation.
Likely causes problems. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, nasty chemicals from the bedrock are released by the creation of the “fracture network” (shattering the bedrock), which gets into the water used for steam generation. From there, if it’s a closed loop system, the damage is somewhat limited, although this likely ruins the groundwater in the area, but if it’s an open loop system, then it emits all the toxic gases stored in the bedrock (including methane and carbon dioxide) and creates a constant stream of contaminated water that has to be dealt with.
You are not reading it wrong
Isn’t the entire problem with fracking the gas extraction? Otherwise it’s just digging a hole.
My understanding is that it can also cause a lot of soil instability and subsidence in the area, but this may be different? Like I said, I’m happy to be wrong.
I am bit sceptical, but I hope it works. Company that I work is part of project that drills geothermal to 7km deep. This tech is challenging in general.
300 000 homes sounds to me near impossible. Also article talks 3,6MW, but doesn’t specify is it MWt or MWe. I assume it is heat, which to converted in turbine to electricity is less than 1.5MW electricity. Also talking about power (MW), but not energy (MWh) is bit strange, and to me sounds that it is just peak what they got.
Edit: the actual paper talks about peak power: https://eartharxiv.org/repository/object/5704/download/11142/
