Transmission: Geothermal's Achilles Heel

A bit of trivia, that geothermal photo was taken in Iceland. I have nearly identical pics from '06.

I enjoyed the podcast; thanks. What Lisa Shevenell and the Great Basin Center are doing on surface temperature assessment is extremely interesting and beautifully pointed toward risk reduction at the front-end stages. I remember Dr. Karl Austin, the great geothermal explorationist, telling us that he'd first spotted a promising resource in Idaho by flying over in a small plane during the winter and noticing a big area where snow was missing! Kind of a gross way of doing what Dr. Shevenell is talking about, I imagine. But it's an exciting idea; kind of a dream job for grad students, too: driving around in Nevada sticking in temperature probes. We sympathize with Ms. Thompson, though we, as geothermal businesspeople in the U.S., are grateful to Canadian companies for their characteristic courage in being willing to make necky, bold investments in renewable energy and mining ventures. We've always thought there must be something in the water up there that makes for bold investers. We're appropriately grateful, but wish the best to CanGEA for more action closer to home.

Does anyone know of any universities that offer a RE Masters in English?
I prefer non-US but US universities are good too.

It seems that no schools offer a PhD in RE; why not? How does one end up doing research in RE? Through the private sector?

Gdescobar, you might look into the University of Reykjavik in Iceland. They have a lively and highly respected RE program for post-grads. I'm not sure what degrees are offered, but it's definitely happening there.

gdescobar, isn't asking about a college degree in renewable energy like asking about a degree in fossil fuels? Colleges teach disciplines like mechanical, electrical and chemical engineering, physics, chemistry and business and then you apply those disciplines to a particular industry: renewable energy or fossil fuels. Of course, there are college programs for nuclear engineering. Mechanical engineering probably covers the design of wind turbines. But I think something like wind energy is limited to trade schools. Not exactly rocket sciense, especially compared to nuclear engineering.

Sobering podcast which says governments are denying peak oil to prevent a panic over future shortages. Although the environmental need for renewable energy is realized, spending is limited and ineffective. US solar companies are leaving the country, while Chinese companies are leaving China with hopes of something here. Geothermal companies in the West can't get the nation to commit to help with finding the resource nor funding a needed national transmission grid for moving power to East coast states (which don't want lower-cost renewable imports anyway).

Since hydro is largely blocked by environmentalists and utilities insist on monopolizing any biomass that they decide to do, renewable efforts boil down to mandates and subsidies for good old-fashioned windmills. Unfortunately, intermittent windpower just about doubles generation costs, while saving few greenhouse gases, because it must be supplemented with natural gas (from ever depleting lower-cost reserves). The writing is on the wall - HUGE ENERGY CRISIS COMING that will force nation to accept either nuclear or maybe gas from unconventional sources, like coal.

Good podcast. I particularly enjoyed the discussion regarding exploring for geothermal resources. These ground probes to ascertain the near surface heat gradient is an important step forward. But it should be noted that many, perhaps most, of the commercial geothermal resources are "hidden", meaning that insulating rock or aquifers mask them so that there is little or no expression of the heat at the surface or that surface expression isn't representative of the temperature gradient at depth (the geothermal system at the RMOTC is a one such example). To map those resources it is necessary to have well data, generally from aquifers, along with a basic geological and hydrological models with which to do a complicated but well understood inverse mapping of the system. This is routinely done on known hydrothermal reservoirs but has seen much less application as a green field exploration tool. There are other techniques such as magnetotellurics that can also be applied in the right circumstances to detect and map hidden resources. These tools become even more critical for EGS.

If transmission is the Achilles heal then it was cut by California ISO when they raised the application fee to have your (clean) power carried on the their transmission lines from $10,000 to a $250,000. And as that barrier to entry brings small power producers to their knees PG&E is standing by to kick them in the balls with the "Renewable Energy Accountability Project " where they pay $2.25 per signature to raise the 700,000 signatures to protect the rate payers from their own ignorance while PG&E emerges as a corporate PUC protecting their turf. Ya, 20% by 2010 my arse … Arnold and the people may be onboard with the Obamanation but not the big public utilities and they're poised to show us just who has the POWER.