State should tap geothermal resources

I'm a big fan of hot springs and usually visit them purely for pleasure. But last month my soak at Chena Hot Springs was all business. Well, mostly. The Alaskan Geothermal Working Group's first "summit" at Chena focused on geothermal as a power source for Alaska.

Over the two-day meeting the 75 participants learned a lot -- like how Iceland is now getting almost 20 percent of its electricity from geothermal. We also heard from Roy Mink, who heads the U.S. Department of Energy's Geothermal Technologies Division in Washington, D.C. He told us the DOE considers Alaska one of a handful of states with excellent potential to increase geothermal electric production.

As we immersed ourselves in Chena's healing waters, thick smoke from the biggest fire season in Alaska history reminded us the planet is warming up. It's about time we put our scientific and political will toward power production that doesn't amplify climate changes.

What these people don't seem to understand is that it has to be economically viable. If I can get cheaper electricity this way, that's great. But I'm not willing to pay higher prices because some eco-terrorist using junk science says this is the way to go. While this may be economical on a small scale in remote areas, I'm not so sure about urban areas.

Environmentalists aren't the brightest bulbs on the string. Economically viable geothermal energy depends on many factors. Rock has a heat capacity about a fifth of that of water, and a thermal conductivity about one five-hundredth of that of copper. Geothermal sources are greatly reduced in effectiveness by groundwater which is ubiquitous in nature, hence the elusive goal in the industry "hot, dry rock". Once you've sucked out your heat, you either wait a few tens of thousands of years for repleneshment, or move your operations elsewhere at great expense. Plumbing, pumps, valves, steam turbines, generators, and distribution points don't grow on trees either. From exploration and mapping the extent of a source to it's eventual exploitation takes immense amounts of capital outlay and technical expertise. You don't just sink a pipe and stick a PG&E meter on it. Economics like many other things seeks it's own level. If it was economically viable and profitable, someone would be doing it and banking. You don't see much of that except in a very few places on earth like Iceland for example where the myriad of variables and conditions conspire to make it worthwhile. Also the legal costs brought to us by decades of anti-exploitation legislation further reduce the profit margin. The problem has been studied in great detail, but alas the environmentalists think if you make enough noise, geothermal energy will magically become a solution to petroleum imports. Sorry, doesn't work that way.

Ironically, geothermal can be an extremely cost-effective energy source in regions that naturally have very high-grade geothermal systems, but the whackjob environmentalists hate geothermal too. Northern Nevada is supposedly the largest high-grade geothermal structure in the world, a veritable Saudi Arabia of geothermal, being one of thinnest points in the earth's crust. While a fair amount of geothermal power is generated there, the environmentalists are adamantly against the idea of doing wholesale geothermal development because it is "ugly" (since they can't complain about it being clean or cheap). In a high-grade geothermal field, you can drill no more than one well bore per 20 acres without having one bore start impacting surrounding bores. As a result, for large fields this means that you have a sparse distribution of pipes coming out of the ground over a huge area feeding the turbines. This is "unsightly" to the environmentalists, even though a lot of these fields are out in desert locations where no environmentalist will ever tread anyway.

The very best geothermal sites can produce approximately 10 Megawatts of continuous power per well, which is a hell of a lot of power for very little infrastructure overhead. Unlike wind and solar, it is continuous. Most places in the world require bore depths of 1-2km before they find enough heat to drive a turbine, but in places like the Reno, NV area, you get 200-300C super-heated steam at depths of only a few hundred meters. Most estimates put the high-grade geothermal carrying capacity of northern Nevada at many, many times the total power output of the world, but you would have to pave the state with pipes and turbines to do it, and the Feds control all of that land anyway. It is worth noting that low-grade geothermal that is poor for power generation is used in Nevada for doing things like providing heat for bulk processing foods, since the cost of developing the geothermal is cheap and the energy -- a major cost of business -- is free. There are a few food processing plants along I-80 out in remote parts of the desert that exist solely to take advantage of convenient low-grade geothermal fields.

Ya know, even with the state subsidy; out here in rural ak our elec bills are double what urban ak pays. Thats on only the first 500 kwh; then even more. Less people in bush alaska than ever, mainly due to the feds preventing any economic development as they create parks & blm lands. Bush alaska is half welfare, no joke. Old nick begich once talked about drilling gas wells in rural alaska to generate clean power at lower cost. Of course the state would foot the bill; but he seemed to think it would be cheaper in the long run than barging oil or flying oil up the yukon. Remember everyone laughed at Hickel too.

There's a hot spring west of fairbanks that is about 10 miles in from road. Snowmachine or run dogteam in. I hear its pretty nice and they have cabins there. Probably no comparison to laierd down in BC, but good for ak standards. Tolovana I think.

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