Not on the scale of what this video shows, in 2013 I had to replace my heating and cooling system. The contractor drilled 5 holes in my yard, 200 feet deep. They then ran a flexible tubing all the way down and back to the surface equaling 2000 feet of tubing, and linked them all together with a sealed tubing system that runs to my new system which is an indoor unit in my garage which keeps it out of the elements. All total, with approximately 2800 feet of tubing is an ethylene glycol type of fluid that constantly circulates at a temperature of about 64 degrees farenheit. Imagine during the summer months when its 90+ degrees outside and you can simply blow air across 64 degree liquid running through the unit. It drops the ambient air temperature quickly and efficiently. Conversely, when its below freezing outside, it is much cheaper to warm cold air from 64 degrees to 70 indoors than to use electricity to raise air temperature from outside where its below freezing to 70 degrees. I love my system and what it saves me in my monthly power bill will eventually pay for the cost of the system. Sorry this is so long, but if one person sees it that is unaware of the benefits and switches, then it's all worth it!

"all the other countries in the world that aren't fortunate enough to be located above fault lines" That's a line you don't hear too often!

Solar and wind are truly renewable, but realistically they are not efficient enough give the current state of tech. Geothermal was always the answer in my eyes. If billionaires and governments would invest in improving the technology and its safety, progress could be fast enough for geothermal to be humanity’s most promising source of energy in a decade or two. Of course the holdup is just money and private interests. Thank you for making this video.

The oil field's drilling technology is the perfect crossover to reaching these high temp zones, practically anywhere in the world. I work in the oil field, particularly in a technology used heavily in exploration drilling where we frequently and successfully drill 8-9km wells. Our equipment and control systems allow us to maintain wellbore stability and instantly react to changing formation pressures which is vital in reaching such depths. And to state plainly: yes, the oilfield is being called on by these geothermal endeavors to help them achieve their goals. It's wonderful to see such a matured, advanced industry being called on to help solve the problems of the future in both renewable energy and space exploration. I believe that our world's future will depend greatly on the success of alternative energies so that we may ween off of oil in its current broad-category uses in order to preserve it for those products we depend on which presently have no feasible replacement for the hydrocarbons used in their making. What are these products? Electric cars, windmills, solar panels, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, thermoplastics, electronics components, and batteries. That is a very short, focused list of products that absolutely cannot be made without oil/petrochemicals. Technology advancements have tried to come up with alternatives to replace hydrocarbons in many of these manufacturing processes and ingredients but many have failed to match or even compare. I can't help but roll my eyes a little when I see someone worked up into a lather about the evils of oil - knowing little to nothing about their dependency on it - as they poke in their latest rant online using their smartphone or computer which are all products made possible only by the use of oil. But please don't misread that as statement that I expect all should bow and thank the oil field for providing it, rather just as a reminder that life rarely offers us problems, especially of our own making, that have pushbutton solutions. If you hate oil, then "know thy enemy" and seek to understand it better so that your thoughts and decisions are better informed in how you deal with its demise. It is my personal hope that in 20-30 years the combined efforts of industries across the globe will have transformed the way we make and use things and that my job in the oilfield is either no longer needed or has morphed into something equivalent in future energy and chemical production.

Q: Why is it solid? A: It's pressure, innit

Fyi new Zealand has been using geothermal for generation of electricity since 1958 and in the last ten years have developed proprietary tech that not only removes the silica but does so in a way that allows us to sell a very high value material to tech companies. World leading tech

The enhanced geothermal method described at 7:50 describes the geothermal project on the Big Island of Hawaii close to where I live. And in 2018 there were earthquakes in this region and the lava started flowing a few miles away from the geothermal plant and lava did cover part of the land of the geothermal site. The lava also covered about 30 square miles of the island covering over two communities a thousand homes and destroying 2 swimming and snorkeling spots, our boat ramp and more. The possible connection to the geothermal plant was never publicly acknowledged.

OK, Iceland has a giant hot tub with a bar in the middle of it. They have *figured it out!*

We Icelanders have been using geothermal in over 100 years, making electricity, making vegetable in green houses and warm our houses....you are right about Iceland part here

I appreciate your technique and tone as well as the information you provide, thanks very much!

Your videos are undeniably brilliant. But so much passes through the channel that it’s hard to remember the most important contributions to green energy. As a solution I suggest you produce an ongoing diagram where those technologies which are most likely to reach energy parity at scale maintain a place on the board - they can also be updated. Keep up the good work and optimism.

217 million years! Excellent. That almost enough time for us to figure out fusion energy :P

I have an old friend on Iceland, who did some maintenance on some of the steel parts of 1 of their power plants. We met recently at he mentioned, that the giant steel tubes, which they run the heated water through, needs to be replaced, roughly every 4th month or so, due to corrosion, from all the sulphur, that is brought up with the water, as a by product, which is also why, they want to send all of that water down again, or clean it, before release out back into the nature. A potential drawback to geothermal energy.

I love your content, thank you for bringing fresh information to your followers !

I have solar and Geothermal, now my monthly energy bill is $ 24 a month for the reverse meter. My total out put was $50,000, saving around $450 a month since 2005. Saving around $5,000 a year 2005 until now 2023, I've saved over $97,000 in those years. Spent the money on home remolding and a large addition, the play room we call it. I'm debt Free as my mortgage will be paid off this year

I love it when the answer to a scientific question is, "it's pressure innit"

I spent a couple of years in South Africa and whilst there I took a job on a building site . OMG the South African sun was killing me so when another mate offered me work in a mine I thought brilliant, anything to be away from the heat of the sun . OMG what a mistake , the further into the crust you go the hotter it gets , now instead of being ‘cooked’ by the South African sun I was being roasted by the heat of the Earth , it was a bad decision taking that job cos atleast under the sun you can find some shade for short term relief, but underground it is sweltering hot everywhere you go . Sometimes my shift times meant I finished work at mid day, and coming out of the mine into the mid day sun was an actual relief . Twenty years later I have never moaned about being out in the sun again, I still remember vividly that year I spent being ‘cooked’ underground .

flat earthers look away, this is going to hurt.

Possibly silly question here: By releasing the underground heat, are we also contributing to global temperature increase? How much of the volcanic activity is also responsible for it? Or is it negligible?

We had geothermal heating system at our old house, it was really good, cheap to run. Where it wasn't exactly at its finest was when you needed to change the indoor temperature, it would take easily 2-3 days before you could actually feel anything. Here in Finland a system like that would cost around 25-30k€ (-4k€ if you switch from oil heating system) and operating it would cost around 30€/month for a house of around 100m2. Water air source heatpumps are just about 50% less expensive, can achieve similar results at costs although needs far more electricity at around -15C. So this is from my experience but it is what it is

"This is your planet as you're used to seeing it," he says, while the planet graphic next to him is rotating the wrong way around.

Wasn't drilling into the earth's core how we got Godzilla??? I'm no expert but that seems like a pretty big downside.

Thanks. I shook your hand as you were leaving the stage at fcs. nice panel about keeping up with the rest of the world. Great to meet you and thanks for the great channel.

I’ve had a geothermal system in my SE Virginia home for some 15 years and love it!!! Highly recommend it. When we went to Island years ago at the end of February (Space A military transport) the floors in the lodge were warm (geothermal heat) and that heated the whole place in the freezing weather.

As always, a well researched, informative video! Please keep the education coming!

I worked for many decades in steam generation and had many friends in geothermal generation. My familiarity is mainly with the large geothermal capacity in Northern California. The geothermal wells cool off over time making the plants non-viable far sooner than a normal steam plant. It takes a lot of wells to supply a viably sized but still small (5MW) steam power plant. You might drill 50 holes and not get enough steam to make it viable, and it might only be viable for no more than 10 years. The low pressure steam into the turbine creates a very low steam cycle efficiency. The steam can have corrosive elements in it when it comes up from the ground and may require periodic descaling of equipment. All these things make it more expensive to operate and challenging to expand, at least in the geothermal fields of California. It is a great way to make power but not an easy way.

You have such a soothing voice, I feel like I could listen to you for hours.

You are such a joy to watch... Thank You for investing in us...

Downhole drilling tools have limitations with heat. Likely melt magnetometer, accelerometers even with shielding. Drill bits, pipes will melt. Heat source needs to be near surface (aka Iceland, sulfuric acid). Heat destroys tools. Must be cost effective. Competition from alternatives cheaper to produce. Bottom line is price. Whereas easy access to geothermal (Volcanic islands) it makes sense.

I helped build a solar field that was constructed directly on top of a geothermal field. The geothermal wasn't used for electricity, but for a MASSIVE heating and cooling system that removed a great deal of electrical demand from a large industrial campus. The water pumped down to 150 feet below the surface, where Earth-temperature year-round is 55 F (13C), was then piped out to the individual buildings. That 55F would be used to cool from, which took no more electricity than was required to pump through the cooling array. In the winter, when heat was required, instead of having to heat up from freezing and below freezing temperatures, they only had to heat up from 55F, which is a big reduction in either electrical heating coils or gas-burning for heat. I doubt the solar-geothermal field will pay for itself in CO2 emissions or electricity for quite some time, but it WILL pay for itself, and meantime, it's at least not adding any more CO2 now that the installation is completed.

I'm glad I found this channel. Good work.

Great efforts, I appreciate you

I heat and cool my home and heat my home water with an active geothermal system. I have a remote, off grid, cabin 40 miles south of Superior, WI. With a little judicious use of insulation, I use passive geothermal to help heat it and have plans to cool it with geothermal, using solar powered fans

A few years back my city had an opportunity to redevelop a big chunk of land into a new neighborhood. They were extremely optimistic and ambitious, commissioning a design plan from a Swedish company for a neighborhood of 30 000 people that would be powered by renewable energy. My city is pretty far north and gets cold winters, so the plan was to build a heat sharing network powered by geothermal energy. Instead of being heated by natural gas the buildings in the neighborhood would tap into hot water pipes running under the ground. It was great. But then... reality intervened. They simply couldn't get financing for the project. The provincial government wouldn't help them and no bank would give them reasonable rates, so they had to scrap the geothermal power and go with a "cheaper" natural gas solution. In my country at least, geothermal energy is seen as an expensive vanity addition to any major building project, and that greatly limits its growth as an alternative energy option. Individuals with enough cash and property developers looking for a way to distinguish their upscale suburb from all the others can build geothermal heating on a house by house level, but no one is willing to build the geothermal power plants that would be needed to make it a serious competitor with natural gas.

I'm just one of the plebs that has never even heard of this type of energy generation, until I saw your video and clicked on it. Thanks and lets hope awareness can be raised.

Thank you that this is free of background music.

This is THE most interesting vid I’ve seen in a long time. Thanks for doing it !

Regarding the earthquakes, isn't there a case to be made that by triggering several small earthquakes, GES releases the tension and reduces the risk of large earthquakes?

We already have dead oil wells in Texas that we already know the temperatures under them. These are treated as toxic waste and ranchers have to fill the holes with concrete and monitor any leakage. Imagine if we could take what is essentially an EPA disaster and turn it into clean and efficient energy. That and no matter if the gas pumps freeze over, it will still make electricity.

Had to watch this as I've wondered about this ever since I learned about geothermal energy. It's so available and efficient!!

I was rock hounding in the mountains near Milford Utah and stumbled upon the Blundell Geothermal Power Plant. I was looking for opal and obsidian, which is all over the area. In the surrounding area there are steam vent pipes sprinkled around the side of the mountain.

"Well it's pressure, innit." Somehow this little sentence really charmed me. Your voice is very calming and I love your style. Consider me Subscribed. ;) x

Would love to see an update to this for the new fusion drilling process. Matt Ferrell did a video on it recently. Exciting stuff! Opens the potential to convert coal and oil plants to geothermal plants for only a couple of million dollars each.

Always love to read the comments from the UKposts trained experts on how easy it is and how they'd easily solve the issues posted by actual engineers who've worked in the field...

I don't know why your channel ended up in my recommendations, but I'm glad it did!

You didn't mention closed-loop systems at all. These solve all of the problems of EGS. Would be awesome if you could do a video on them. Companies Eavor and Green Fire Sytems both are developing these systems. Eavor even has a test system they have had online since 2019.

ST1 started drilling 7 km deep hole next to my office in Espoo in about 2012. The project was canceled after 7-8 years due to high costs. They had even finished the drilling (eventually), but I think getting the heat out was the problem in the end. Today the hole remains sadly unused. Ground heating has been trendy in Finland now for 15-20 years since the pay back period can be around 7-10 years.

Thank you, it was interesting to watch

If we could harness the hot air coming out of Washington, DC.

There is a related technology generally called a ground-source heat pump which extracts the heat from warmth provided by the sun during the summer. This is more akin to a giant storage heater made from the surrounding landscape where the temperature remains constant at below about three metres..The heat from the ground is collected by long lengths of buried pipes or vertical shafts then the small temperature difference is extracted (using something similar to a fridge in reverse) and concentrated to heat water or air in a building. The added advantage of this system is that it can be used to cool a building as well as provide heat

I could listen to this man educate me all day. More please.

quite enjoyed this vid, thank you

I'm surprised you only talked about corrosion briefly--one of the major difficulties is pipe corrosion, and it can be quite expensive to maintain.

I wonder if you would consider Earth tempered structures part of geothermal. In the state of Nebraska in the US it gets pretty cold in the winter they've been growing papayas and other tropical fruits simply by burying pipes in the soil 8 foot down and pumping air through them into a sunken Greenhouse. I believe China also does something like that. No fossil fuels are used. The air is pumped by solar and Battery.

I live in canada. My parents house use geothermal wells to heat their house in winter and cool it down in summer. Under the house they have built two 750 feet deep wells where water circulates in a loop. In winter, the geothermal heat is transfered to the house’s air using a heat exchanger. In summer, the process is reversed, the geothermal wells become the air conditioning system, keeping it cool by transfering that heat down thoses wells. From what I remember my dad told me, his geothermal AC system works just like a regular air conditioning system, except that instead of compressing air to release it outside, it compressed it to release it down there. Year round, no matter if its a -40C winter or a 30C summer, their house always stays at 21C His system of two 750 feet wells seems quite effective, since it works despite the insane size of their house, it always remains that temperature( I never saw a house as large as my parent’s in my 22 years of living from my own eyes. The only ive seen were on TV or so. (Also not trying to flex their house here, I dont live with them anymore, I live in a small appartment lmao…I just mentioned it’s size to state the point that if two wells at that depth can do that for a huge mansion, in a canadian place nowhere near a faultline, then it can definately work for many much smaller homes. My dad was also an early adopter of geothermal I guess. His house and the system were built in 2002. I am glad to see this technology getting more popular worldwide now

The information you have presented gives me an understanding why BC Hydro walked away from a Geothermal project near Whistler, though I think it wouldn't be any worse than the Site 3 Dam on the Peace River.

The multi-family building where I live is heated by geothermal wells, some 300 meters deep. The building was originally heated by fossil gas. A heat exchanger takes heat from the water from the wells and sends it out to the apartments via the original water-carried heating system.It also provides the heat for hot tap water. I believe the geothermal wells use a closed loop system, where the water goes down and up (in separate pipes obviously) in the same well. The bedrock here is limestone, so exposing the carrier water to that would cause clogging by calcification pretty soon. Using heat from the ground for heating seems more straightforward than making electricity, and reduces CO2 emissions just the same. This is southern Sweden, so we use the heating for about 8 months of the year.

i learned about geothermal energy from the movie "Man of Steel" They tried using geothermal energy on Krypton and as i recall, it didn't work out too well

Drilling 40km into solid rock has its drawbacks, but closer to the surface is a viable option. From roughly 1m depth the temperature is fairly steady at 10C, in winter and summer. This can readily be used for cooling in summer, eliminating the need for old fashioned air-conditioning units. Going deeper raises the temperature with about 2-3C per 100m, and you'll can convert that energy into heating with a water to water heatpump. Individual systems (homes) are rarely financially viable, but with a cluster of houses one could do very well indeed.

At the equator, where the sun rays hit the earth directly, there is a significant difference of temperature between the water at the surface and water at the bottom which can be used to produce electricity by boiling Ammonia gas and using it to power steam turbines, then cooling the Ammonia gas with the cold water. This would enable us to store the energy for later use as Hydrogen via electrolysis for shipping and aviation. Using this energy should also reduce the frequency of hurricanes hitting the Caribbean islands, the Southern U.S and central America. Same type of technology but it helps to slow down global warming.

Where I live in Oregon, we drilled wells only 85 feet and average about 200 feet. They can produce 200* F water very commonly. Our well is 220 feet and is 195* F out of a completely closed loop. I made a copper heat exchanger from 1/2 copper pipe. The well pipe is 1 inch Pex pipe. I think you could use Ammonia in a heat exchanger because it would boil below the 195* F to produce electricity anywhere in our area.

Interesting video. Makes sense to tap into all areas of energy production rather than focus on only one or two, which is wind and solar and about all you hear about. Good to know they are talking about other things as well. I think small modular reactors will be a good candidate.

9:38 your comedic timing here sent me into a blender. you need an award my good sir

Fantastic video 🙂 very insightful

So glad that your channel is really picking up steam with increasing subscribers! Excellent production skills are paying off.

There have been projects around here where they use bore holes for heating buildings using heat pumps. It's very efficient, but costly. It might be the way to go, unless something pretty substantial happens in regards to nuclear fission/fusion. Because of the costs involved, government funding seems to be the solution to get things going. The promise of energy without "fuel" can't be ignored.

That’s interesting. There are some questions: 1. At the micro application, will it be more economical to the common people? how it will be use? 2. How would it be distributed? 3. which place that’s used the geothermal energy so far?

There are lots of flooded mine workings in the UK. These can be used as a heat source for regional heating. Before Covid it was being planned in Barnsley is South Yorkshire

I live in l'Hay-les-Roses, a Parisian suburb, and all the large buildings such as apparment blocks schools and gymnasiums are all heated using geothermal heating. They pump water into a hot substrate at a couple of hundred metres down and what comes up is 86° C. It’s not perfect, the water is quite corrosive when it comes back up and eats through the pipe welds over time, but it works. French electricity is mostly nuclear so zero carbon heating. Three suburbs use the network and it heats about half the homes and all the schools for about 80,000 people.

“We can’t put a meter on it, we don’t want it” - JP Morgan.

The problem is that Wind and Solar has won the public relations war for green energy even though perhaps the least efficient systems.

Well done! My question for manyears. Thank you.

because Iceland is doing it now proves it works , lots of places where hot springs and vents could be used , environmental alarmism and the petroleum , solar ,and wind industries don't like cheap or free energy that requires little infrastructure and maintenance

Video IDEA - would love to see a video on household level geothermal - passive heat, heat pumps and distributed energy. Thanks! Love the videos

Deep oil wells (2-3 miles deep) have drill temp of 450°C. The Yellowstone Caldera contains enough geothermal to power the US. If we start cooling it now maybe it won't explode in a million years.

Very informative video, thanks!

One method I once saw for harvesting the heat consisted of drilling deep holes and sinking long vertical tubes into them. The tubes were coaxial and closed at the end so water or some other fluid is pumped down the central tube and flows back up between the inner and outer tube gathering heat from the surrounding rock on the way up. The fluid always remained inside the system, the heat being transferred from the rock through the outer wall of the tube. This meant no issues of earthquakes, contamination and all that. I've no ide what happened to that - it must have had some fatal flaw, perhaps simply that it could not collect enough heat to be viable. But then again maybe it is something that can be solved one day.

You don't actually need 'hot rock' if you're trying to heat a building, remember that 0 cenitgrade is actually 273 absolute, so if you chose a liquid that freezes low enough you can extract heat from anywhere. Underfloor central heating runs at a much lower temperature than conventional central heating, so it's relatively simple to heat a building from any rocks. Heating buildings from geothermal energy leaves more renewable electricity to displace fossil fuels.

I have had a Waterfurnace geothermal system for 12 years. It is a great heating and cooling system that has had very little maintainence. My wife loves the warm air and I preheat my water going into the water heater. Love It. !!

The earth turns the other way around (as seen by the camera )besides that minor detail great video!!

Japan has literally hundreds of hot springs, but practically no geothermal, even though they have to import coal and oil. It's a real shame.

The earth is rotating backward in that beginning shot.

Just returned from Iceland and wanted to learn more! Thanks for this video

7:02 😂 Your delivery was flawless.

State of California has an agreement with the EPA that earthquakes don't exceed the low 2's, which is where a great number of small earthquake activity happens every day. Look at the USGS daily All Magnitudes list.

The bit about Iceland's uses for extra hot water was really interesting!

omg you're awesome, i love your passionate energy stripey man

Great content. 👍

Just a little side note: In the video you have mentioned that in geothermal use cases only water is used to enhance permeability of the rock, compared to the "classic" scenario where also chemicals would be injected. Actually that is not the case. Chemicals are widely used to enhance rock permeability. But still a really informative video! Thanks for that.

There is one thing speaking for EGA not mentioned here: We already have a lot of experience with fracking/ drilling, aka the infrastructure and qualified manpower is there. And drilling companies obviously don't care for what they drill, it just needs to offer profits.

I proposed that the core is a iron crystal formation, tubal crystal formation, so dense friction doesn’t take place so so the temperature isn’t altered, the core built up a charge whilst flying through the universe, dust clings to the charge, this formation is created by the “black hole” when it eventually fractures, the core of the sun is likely the same material

Well explained and very interesting!

It is nice to see that you have completely glossed over the real reasons the this tech is not growing. First, their is a lot of stuff down there that should stay down there. The geothermal primary heat loop is quite expansive covering many tens of miles of surface plumbing for a small 20MW facility. Even with state of the art technology, ie metals, the medium in this loop (water and dissolved elements) is so adverse to this plumbing that the time to failure is in the order of a few years. This mandates inspections of the entire loop on a continuous basis, and that is not just hoping in a pickup truck and driving around, you need to be wearing protective gear including SCUBA equipment. Most failures are in that part of the loop where the hot water and it's dissolved elements are collected. A leak here releases heavy metals ie. arsenic and gas compounds ie. sulfur dioxide into the surrounding area. I know of of no geothermal facility that has not had such an event. A power plant that I worked at for 35 years had a 10,000 gallon tank for liquid sulfur dioxide. The emergency response plan to a leak in it's system was the total evacuation of everybody up to and including a town 10 miles away.

I worked for a company who drilled geothermal wells for just this kind of thing. It is extremely difficult to drill geothermal wells. Metals used for drill pipe and the well casing do not stand up very well to the heavy metals and corrosion present in the geothermal formations. The metals corrode and have to be replaced on a regular basis. There are also concerns for naturally occurring toxic gasses like H2S that are often present. Great theory, difficult application.

When I toured New Zealand , I came across a Geothermal Plant on a large scale. Geothermal Activity near the surface in New Zeland, they use it well for steam generation .

Sounds great! Sounds like a very deep subject

I see a lot of wasted heat energy in our cities particularly. My local shopping mall has a huge underground car park. During the winter months it fills up with cars and they sit there radiating energy from their hot engine blocks for a good couple of hours whilst you shop. Meanwhile, upstairs, they are utilising mains electricity to blow warm air into the shop. This is clearly mental! Also, the London Underground is a massive clay storage heater that has been warming up for a century now. Imagine using a calorie of heat in your office building that was created as waste from the brakes of a tube train in 1906 😱

There's another idea out there just starting to take hold. Very large underwater turbines at the bottom of the ocean using the deep ocean currents to drive them. HUGE energy there that may be able to be tapped with very little or no environmental issues. Plus the output would be 100% steady and reliable.

I think the main problem from the very start of the whole alternate fuels movement was expecting it to be a total replacement for oil and other fossil fuels when it doesn't have to be at all! Even if geothermal or solar could reduce our dependence on foreign oil by even say, ten percent that would be a HUGE step in the right direction. Any chance that can be taken to effectively use renewable energy sources even just a little here and there at a time shouldn't be discounted and underestimated. Consider them a supplement, not a replacement of fossil fuels.

Spatial scale is the challenge for taking a classic “utility service” approach, as Iceland has done (practical because of high temps relatively close to surface). If the heat or electricity generated from that heat travels long distances, there is an efficiency loss. Coupled with the relatively high capital cost to install, the distribution of convenient geothermal sources is limited globally. Thus, widespread geothermal development is more efficient when applied on small scales because much less drilling/digging is needed. This heat exchanger approach is very efficient at scales of individual structures or small clusters of structures. The problem at the small scale is: does the property owner have the money to spend on that relatively high capital cost?