i am doin a project for science class.
i need to know what will happen in the future for geothermal energy.. please answer if you know.
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Geothermal has different types of use. A lot of people think of geothermal energy as something that only produces electricity. Actually it can be used as an excellent form of heating and air conditioning.
Traditional geothermal energy sites such Larderello in Italy, Wairakei in New Zealand, and the Geysers in California use pressurized steam generated from aquifers in contact with hot rock from nearby volcanic action. These three projects have been in operation for more than 40 years, and there are sites now in 70 countries using this technology. Where pressurized steam is available, the economics are very good, with costs below 4 cents per kilowatt hour. Projects using this technology now total about 10 GigaWatts of installed capacity and supply about 0.3% of the world’s electricity.
However the number of suitable sites around the world is limited. What could really make geothermal take off is technology to exploit so called “hot dry rocks”. This is where holes are drilled in the ground (usually down 2 to 4 miles), somehow connected and water is pumped in to recover the heat. The drilling technology is difficult but a number of commercial projects are planned – see links. The major cost is the cost of drilling the holes and interconnecting them underground to efficiently extract the heat. If the cost of drilling can be reduced, the projects will be successful.
All current projects are targeted at rock formations that are unusually hot – again from volcanic activity.
If the cost of drilling could be reduced further, then energy could be extracted from rocks anywhere. Away from tectonic plate boundaries the average increase in temperature in the continental crust (the “geothermal gradient”) is about 80 degrees F per mile of depth. If the cost of drilling could be cut enough to make extraction of the heat from these rocks economic, then geothermal energy would be sufficient to sustainably supply more than double the wold’s current electricity demand.
It will be widely used where it is economically feasable, such as Iceland, but in areas where it is too expensive for a practical energy source then it will not be used