Geothermal Power Thread

[amor de cosmos]

Sports club taps geothermal resources to cut energy costs
By Emma Fitzpatrick on 19 May 2014

In an Australian first, AGL Energy has joined with a local Victorian sports club to install the state’s first geothermal cooling and heating system in a building.

The “GeoAir” facility at the Maroondah Sport’s Club uses the earth’s constant temperature to heat and cool underground pipes. The emerging technology uses a pump to send refrigerant underground through copper lines in a small well about forty metres deep.

The crux of the technology is that the refrigerant assumes the same temperature of the surrounding earth; cooler than the air in summer and warmer in winter.

The refrigerant is then pumped back to the surfaces at the desired temperature and most of the cooling or heating has already taken place.

One of the key advantages of this technology is its low environmental impact. With energy derived from converting heat extracted from the earth, emissions are low to zero and no carbon dioxide is released.

It also does not create any noise pollution, excess waste or by-products, and only a small environmental footprint is left behind.

Further to this, the system uses the ground loops as a condenser, removing the need for external air conditioning equipment. It has the highest known efficiencies of any air-conditioning system.

http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/spor...gy-costs-41178

[amor de cosmos]

US Geothermal Industry Gets Huge Resource "Datapalooza" Boost
Renewable Energy World Editors
June 03, 2014 | 0 Comments

New Hampshire, USA -- In order to move the nearly stagnant U.S. geothermal market along, the industry needs help identifying viable resources. The Department of Energy (DOE) has been hard at work developing a tool that will help this process, and recently announced the official launch of its National Geothermal Data System (NGDS).

NGDS is part of President Obama's Open Data Policy initiative and was released during the White House Energy Datapalooza in Washington, D.C., which "highlight[s] private-sector entrepreneurs and innovators that are using freely available data from the government and other sources to build products, services, and apps that advance a secure and clean energy future."

In what the DOE hopes will “change America’s energy portfolio" and accelerate the geothermal industry, NGDS aggregates state geological surveys from across the country into an organized information hub. This data includes more than 650,000 well logs, 530,000 borehole temperatures, and 1.7 million oil, gas, water and geothermal well headers from all 50 states.

The $21.9 million project that was funded by the DOE gives users access to existing data and also allows them to contribute their own data into the system, which means data is regularly updated and maintained. Today, it boasts more than 9 million data points and is still growing. Potential stakeholders can use its interactive map to locate resources geographically, a library to filter data records by keyword, and other resoucres that include other open-source applications that can iteract with NGDS data, such as other exploration tools like the National Renewable Eenergy Laboratory's geothermal prospector, or financial tools like the Geothermal Financial Risk Classification and Assessment Tool (GeoFRAT).

According to the DOE, NGDS users will be able to better:

• Determine geothermal potential
• Guide exploration and development
• Make data-driven policy decisions
• Minimize development risks
• Understand how geothermal activities affect your community and the environment
• Guide investments

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/...apalooza-boost

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...y6IUhd5G_n0_L-

[amor de cosmos]

Iberian Peninsula's geothermal power can generate current electrical capacity five times over
3 hours ago

The temperature increases by 30 ºC for every kilometre further underground. This thermal gradient, generated by the flow of heat from the inside of the Earth and the breakdown of radioactive elements in the crust, produces geothermal power. Around 500 power stations around the world already use it to generate electricity, although there are yet to be any in Spain.

However, the subsoil of the Iberian Peninsula has the capacity to produce up to 700 gigawatts if this resource was exploited with enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) at a depth of between 3 and 10 kilometres, where the temperatures exceed 150 ºC. This is confirmed in a study that engineers from the University of Valladolid (UVa) have published in the journal 'Renewable Energy'.

"The operation of an enhanced geothermal system uses the injection of a fluid (water or carbon dioxide) to extract thermal energy from the rock located a few thousand metres below the surface, and whose permeability has been improved or stimulated previously with fracturing processes," explains César Chamorro, one of the authors. "Afterwards, the heated fluid is taken upwards to the geothermal station, where it produces electricity, generally via a binary cycle (exchanging heat between the water and an organic liquid), and it is re-injected into the site in a closed cycle".

http://phys.org/news/2014-06-iberian...r-current.html