I actually like the idea of using geothermal when possible. It would be really great to have a low power system that can keep your house at a target temp basically year round.
Archive: https://archive.today/VeMSJ
From the post:
>North Milford Valley, in western Utah, is home to dormant volcanoes, subterranean lava deposits, and smatterings of obsidian—black volcanic glass—that Paiute peoples once collected for arrowheads and jewelry. Scalding groundwater still bubbles to the surface in places. In such a landscape, you remember that the planet’s hard exterior, where we spend our entire lives, is so thin that we call it a crust. Its superheated interior, meanwhile, burns with an estimated forty-four trillion watts of power. Milford was once a lead-, silver-, and gold-mining town, but when I visited the area on a sunny spring morning a scientist named Joseph Moore was prospecting for something else: heat.
The Geysers area in Northern California has been providing power to San Francisco for 50 years. In the right area it makes some sense, like hydropower
Two huge issues with geothermal. First is location. It doesn't work anywhere really east of the Rockies due to the land being too geologically stable. You'd have to dig too deep to make it economic. Second is the fluid. Unless something has changed recently, the fluid used for the thermal transfer has a nasty habit of gumming up and making the whole system efficiency go to shit. Last I read, the downtime and fluid cost kills any savings the plant may have had over energy sources.
I agree with you, geothermal is bad ass shit and is really good, but much like hydro, it's so location and resource dependant so as to make it infeasible for daily use.
Yeah, if you live somewhere that it makes sense than great but it is not a "silver bullet" for anywhere at any time.
