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To: Michael.SF.
"The grid allows this to happen. You seem to think that if a plant in California produces electricity, then that electricity must travel the entire distance to Maine to be used in Maine. That is not the case and you are clearly wrong on that point."

I'll try this ONE MORE TIME. If geothermal is to be broadly useful in solving the energy problems of the United States, then either 1) its sources must be widely dispersed across the population in need of power, or 2) the power that it generates at the isolated points of availability must be transmittable to the places where it is needed.

A short perusal of any map of the potential area of availabilty shows that 1) is not the case. An examination of the physics of power transmission shows that 2) is impossible as long as the transmission is as electric power due to transmission losses. Being "attached to the grid" does ZIP to solve 2), given the size of the USA.

Because of these unchangeable facts, geothermal will never be a significant part of the solution to the United States energy needs.

The ONLY sense in which you could sell your position is an economic one--i.e. that energy is fungible, and that electricity generated by the relatively small and isolated geothermal "hot-spots" frees up other forms of energy usable in electrical generation to be used in other regions that don't possess geothermal. But "being hooked to the grid" is irrelevant in the economic sense, because what is being "transmitted" is the dollars to buy the fuel.

106 posted on 08/04/2006 12:47:57 PM PDT by Wonder Warthog (The Hog of Steel-NRA)
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To: Wonder Warthog
Two questions:

a) Why is the problem you speak of isolated to power produced by Geothermal?

b) Why can fossil and nuclear plants exist at remote (+300 miles) from major urban areas w/o problem?

107 posted on 08/04/2006 4:11:57 PM PDT by Michael.SF. (The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples money -- M. Thatcher)
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