this video is sponsored by cuts when did and solar are becoming more popular by the minute and
there's enough energy coming from the Sun and the wind to power the world there's a problem because
of their intermittency we need vast amounts of energy storage and we can't just install wind
and solar Farms wherever we want but what if I told you there was a virtually Limitless clean
reliable and sustainable source of renewable energy that's available 24 7 all over the world
and that it could provide all the energy we'll ever need for the next two million years we're
talking about geothermal energy and it's Beneath Your Feet as we speak so why aren't we building
these power plants that are geothermal based everywhere I'm Ricky and this is tuba DaVinci
geothermal power is one of the most promising sources of renewable energy and it's also one
of the most underutilized it works by capturing heat from the Earth's core and transporting it to
the surface where we can use it for heating or convert it into electricity in the latter case
geothermal power plants work similarly to thermal power plants in that they use hot pressurized
steam to power a steam turbine that drives a generator however instead of burning fossil
fuels to generate hot steam we use heat from the Earth's core so how much geothermal energy
is there this heat is in part A Remnant from the Earth's original forming but a significant portion
of it comes from nuclear fission reactions of decaying radioactive elements present in the
Earth's core because of all that internal energy the Earth's solid core is at a scorching 10 800
degrees Fahrenheit around 6000 degrees Celsius almost as hot as the surface of the Sun that
heat is conducted to the outer layers creating a geothermal temperature gradient that extends
to the Earth's crust where we can tap into this heat now for for different reasons we're not going
to get into we can't really drill any deeper than about five and a half miles 10 kilometers
or a tenth of the crust maximum thickness at that depth the Earth's temperature gradient or
geothermal gradient has an average temperature of about 450 degrees Fahrenheit so that's not crazy
hot but it is about pizza oven hot and there's approximately 1.3 times 10 to the 27th joules of
thermal energy available that's 13 followed by 26 zeros to understand just how mind-bogglingly large
that number is consider that the global energy consumption 2021 was almost 6.1 times 10 to
the 20 joules so geothermal is for all practical purposes and inexhaustible Resource One we've been
using for thousands of years as a source of heat and since 1904 to produce electricity when Prince
Pierre genore Conti an Italian businessman and politician invented the geothermal power plant in
Laredo Tuscany geothermals underlying importance is that unlike solar and wind it doesn't suffer
from intermittency as I pointed out in previous videos this intermittency means we'll need massive
amounts of grid energy storage worldwide over 20 000 times we have now to replace fossil fuels
with wind and solar additionally solar is only a viable option in places that get a lot of sunshine
and wind speeds are only sufficient to power turbines in certain areas around the world in
contrast geothermal power plants can provide clean carbon-free energy in a reliable and predictable
way 24 hours a day 365 days a year making one of the few available options to replace gas and
Diesel turbines for base load power generation I'm going to try to travel to bring you more
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today huge thanks to cuts and you for supporting the show here are a couple more fun facts about
geothermal energy that make it an awesome energy source number one geothermal power plants have a
very small footprint compared to most other energy sources geothermal power plants also make better
use of land they only need to take up about 0.1 Acres around 400 square meters per gigawatt hour
per year of installed capacity that's only half a tennis court per gigawatt hour compared to hydro's
math massive 27 Acres or 109 000 square meters Kohl's 0.9 Acres solar power is 0.8 and wind
farms at 0.33 acres in fact geothermal is number two in terms of footprint only to nuclear at 0.95
acres two they can leverage the oil industry's know-how and Equipment building a geothermal
power plant is very similar to Drilling in oil or gas production well this is a huge incentive
for big oil companies to invest in this technology as fossil fuels run out or are eventually phased
out because it would let them repurpose millions of dollars worth of equipment and infrastructure
while providing a steady source of income to replace their previous oil revenues what's
more this will also mean that oil field industry workers and specialized Engineers won't be left
without a job when we replace fossil fuels three we can use it to repurpose Wastewater California
houses the largest geothermal power complex in the world the geysers which produces around 900
megawatts of electricity the plant uses Wastewater from several nearby towns to recharge the wells
and keep them producing energy finally as I said before geothermal is present below the surface
of our entire planet so we all could in theory set up a geothermal power plant anywhere we need
one now if you've made it this far in the video you're probably just as excited about geothermal
as I am and you're probably pretty puzzled why aren't we building these power plants everywhere
if they're so great to be fair we have built a good number of geothermal power plants around
the world but these are nowhere near as many as we need or could build the total installed
geothermal power capacity worldwide reached only 15.6 gigawatts in 2021 which is roughly 0.6
percent of our current power consumption that's why I say this is one of the most under utilized
sources of energy if you're thinking there must be something wrong with geothermal then well
there is but to understand what it is we'll have to go a bit deeper into how geothermal
energy production actually works in essence we have geothermal for two main applications as a
direct source of heat or to transform that heat into electricity when we talk about direct use
we mean direct transferring heat from the Earth to residential commercial industrial and recreational
buildings through District heating geothermal heat pumps and other technology I made a video
about geothermal heat pumps and my good friend Matt Farrell from undecided is also installing
one for his net zero home build I suggest you check out those videos when you finish watching
this one links in the description geothermal power plants on the other hand are what we use
to produce electricity from the Earth's heat as I said in the beginning of this video all those
power plants use steam-powered turbines to power electricity generators the rest of the system
comes in several variations the most common of which are dry steam Flash and binary geothermal
power plants the First Technology was the one originally invented by pirogenori in Italy this
set feeds hot water vapor and steam extracted from hot underground permeable reservoirs directly into
the turbine the steam is then cooled condensed and pumped back into the reservoir as liquid
water through an injection well dry steam power plants are not all that common but some of the
units in the geysers in California do run on dry steam generators contrary to dry steam flash
geothermal power plants extract high pressure high temperature liquid water from the production
into a flash tank where it then evaporates this produces high pressure steam that is then fed
into the turbine finally we have binary cycle power plants that use one float usually liquid
water to extract heat from the permeable Reservoir and transfer that heat through a heat exchanger
to a working fluid usually an organic compound with a much lower boiling point which readily
evaporates producing the steam that powers the turbine binary plants are great because they can
work at much lower temperatures and therefore at much shallower depth in dry Steam and Flash power
plants all these Technologies are mature and have already been deployed at commercial scale
worldwide but as you can probably guess they have several drawbacks the biggest problem holding us
back from worldwide geothermal deployment is finding suitable sites for their construction
the basic requirements for suitable sites include heat fluids Steam and water and most importantly
fractured permeable Rock we can always find geothermal heat if we drill deep enough if we
can almost always find suitable sources of water to pump into the reservoir including Wastewater
from nearby towns but permeability of the rock is a challenge there are only a few accessible
places on Earth where traditional geothermal is feasible so it would seem that the vast amount
of that energy below our feet is Out Of Reach For example in the U.S the country's eastern coast is
practically devoid of geothermal potential with current technology the second big obstacle is
cost the process of exploration drilling into the ground building a power plant and generating power
is very expensive these costs Drive geothermal average levelized cost of electricity generation
or lcoe in the range of around 4 cents to 14 cents per kilowatt hour making it more expensive
than onshore wind and utility scale solar last but definitely not least there's a proven connection
between pumping water through injection Wells and geothermal sites and load magnitude seismic
activity in the region while these tremors are typically no stronger than three on the Richter
Scale it's definitely something that scares the widths out of the local residence and
that generates pushback from local communities so there you have it we finally uncovered the answer
to why aren't geothermal plants everywhere with our current technology we can't just
build them anywhere they're crazy expensive to build they don't represent an attractive
option for investors and it scares locals does that mean it's the end for geothermal energy
of course not I wouldn't be covering this if it was there are at least two or three promising new
technologies that could potentially change the game for geothermal energy one of which we've
already seen hit commercial scale they both aim to solve geothermal's biggest problem the need
for fractured permeable Rock the first technology is called enhanced geothermal systems or EGS and
EGS is a geothermal power plant that artificially creates the much needed porosity within the Earth
to allow water to flow from an injection well to the production well this is done by pumping
cold water into the hot Solid Rock causing the rock to crack because of thermal contraction and
water vapor pressure now before you shout out in the comments talking about how this is just like
fracking know that EGS only pumps water so there's no risk of groundwater contamination like there is
with natural gas and oil and this also happens at much lower pressure so there's much lower risk to
the site's geological stability still the slight risk of geological instability is the trade-off of
having access to geothermal energy anywhere which is huge there are several EGS plants
already in commercial operation with Francis Schultz plant and Germany's Landa plant being
the first so at this point if you're unconvinced about the prospects of EGS well good news there's
another alternative that I think is actually more appealing and Alberta based technology company
called evor designed the perfect solution for geothermal their Advanced geothermal system or
you guessed it AGS basically works by connecting the injection well to the production weld through
a sealed pipe completely eliminating the need for fractured Rock there's also absolutely no
greenhouse gas emissions no chance of underground water pollution and we can even use liquids other
than water to extract heat more efficiently which is not an option for other geothermal
systems the first evor Loop was built in Canada as a proof of concept and it was built in some of
the toughest rock around and has been operation since 2019. however this promising solution is
yet to hit commercial scale if it does though it could finally open the door to an endless supply
of energy like we've never seen before speaking of which there is an even newer technology right
around the corner that could make geothermal even more promising by allowing us to drill twice as
deep and access temperatures as high as 1000 degrees Fahrenheit and get this without even
touching the rock but that breakthrough is so promising that it's earned a video all its own
so stay tuned we'll follow up shortly if we can get this to work and lower the cost of geothermal
energy down to the levels of current Diesel and natural gas generators will finally have a real
candidate to replace fossil fuels on a global scale and that's something worth looking forward
to and I'll leave you with one final thought like all these topics that we cover there's always
pros and cons and trade-offs and I'm thinking there's going to be a few comments about this
what happens if we take too much heat out of the core or the Earth and if the Earth cools that
introduces a whole slew of other problems what it comes down to though is the scale of what we'd be
looking at if there were bajillions of these geothermal power plants all around the world
that might be a concern but by and large based on where they're built and how feasible they
are odds are we don't have to worry about the Earth cooling anytime soon but I want to hear
your thoughts on this do you think Technologies like enhanced geothermal or simple or too risky
to pursue if you think Advanced geothermal like evil solution will be the Holy Grail of Clean safe
sustainable and reliable energy production sound off in the comments below but before you go check
out this video that we did on geothermal that I think you'll also enjoy see you next week