YHK - yet another hacker news clone

World's First enhanced geothermal power plant completed in just 23 months

64 points hochmartinez 2 hours ago 12 comments

pfdietz 2 hours ago | parent

If the coffin needed any more nails, this puts the final kibosh on that cancelled SMR project out there that centered on Utah and Idaho, the one involving NuScale. Geothermal makes much more sense for them now.

There's a geothermal project at the Newberry Volcano in Oregon that also looks interesting (different people doing that).

billjive 1 hour ago | parent

Yes! It's near where I live, very excited to see this come online.

toomuchtodo 42 minutes ago | parent

Does this support improved availability and economics of district heating?

pfdietz 32 minutes ago | parent

I don't think district heating had anything to do with the CFPP.

toomuchtodo 20 minutes ago | parent

I was referring to enhanced geothermal in general for district heating, as I believe you are potentially a subject matter expert and qualified to opine.

thinkcontext 1 hour ago | parent

Certainly a welcome development. Let's hope this pilot can be repeated and scaled.

andruschakartem 1 hour ago | parent

23 months to build is impressive, but the number that matters for EGS is thermal drawdown. If the fractured rock cools faster than modeled they have to keep drilling new wells, so I'd like to see Cape's output a few years in.

ceejayoz 1 hour ago | parent

Is there any reason to believe this is likely?

floatrock 31 minutes ago | parent

If it wasn't, enhanced geothermal would be everywhere, which it isn't. (Yet, this company would say.)

Op is really just describing a core breakeven metric on the energy source. In the same way you measure an oil well with half-life of useful output, this is basically saying "EGS can prove to be useful if they can make sure they extract more economically useful heat than the economic costs of constantly drilling new wells."

Since no one has really made EGS widespread yet, that suggests no one has yet cracked this nut.

ceejayoz 16 minutes ago | parent

> If it wasn't, enhanced geothermal would be everywhere, which it isn't.

That seems like a fallacy.

LikeBeans 37 minutes ago | parent

I admit I don't know enough, but does it negatively affect the underground water a negative way? I read a while back that geothermal plants (can) use fracking like technique to heat up the water but it has negative effects on the local geology and underground water. But not sure if that's true hencey question here.

tonyarkles 6 minutes ago | parent

Huh, my first reaction was to say that Enhanced Geothermal is actually just a polite way of saying fracked geothermal but it turns out that's not quite accurate. Hydro-shearing (which EGS uses) doesn't intentionally create new cracks in the rock, which fracking does, but will cause existing cracks to grow. Potentially still negative local effects for sure but not as violently, hopefully.