You are getting tiresome with your weak understanding and misconceptions of what I have been saying. I never have said that the grid was a method of transmitting power across the country. I said that you do not understand how it works. Further I will say that the answer is in the sentence above, yet you do not realize it.
Here is what you said that was factually wrong:
In a very limited area, where it (electricity derived from geothermal plants) happens to be both readily accessible and near population centers,
Admittedly you did not define "near" I would define near as being within 15-200 miles. I gave you a list of power plants that are located several hundred miles from the urban areas that use "their" electricity.
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.
Here is why:
The grid could be viewed as a charged energy field with multiple inputs and multiple outputs. Electricity is put in at any point and can be taken out at any point. The controllers who operate the grid have the ability to bring up plants, or bring down plants anywhere on the grid to balance the total power distributed.
A sudden surge in usuage, in say Denver, could cause a shortage in the grid sector covered. Thus, they could ramp up power plants in SLC, Wyoming, Kansas or other surrounding areas, to replenish this surge. This is called "load sharing" which you mentioned, but did not understand.
Power plants are paid based on their feed into the grid and are paid at various rates depending on the complexities of established agreements (the commercial agreements are not an area that I have experience).
There are also independent producers who do not tie into the grid and in those cases, then their electrical distibution is limited, but it is limited to a distnace which my not be as "near" as you seem to think.
i have been following the discussion between you guys. I was really hoping to find out some useful information about the use of geothermal, so let me see if i got this all straight:
Geothermal is a viable option
Geothermal is expensive, so will probably not be a large factor in the near future.
Geothermal may or may not be able to be used around the world
Geothermal is good as individual home pumps
What are the enviornmental reprocussions of Geothermal. If we remove the heat from the earth's core, will that make the crust hotter? Will heat radiation from the earth increase? Will we be able to pump all excess waste back into the ground? What is it that makes it so expensive? If we can use some of our oil drilling techniques and machines, then why is the expense issue.
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.