From the Washington Post via MSN, November 19:
On the slopes of an Oregon volcano, engineers are building the hottest geothermal power plant on Earth.
The plant will tap into the infernal energy of Newberry Volcano, “one of the largest and most hazardous active volcanoes in the United States,” according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It has already reached temperatures of 629 degrees Fahrenheit, making it one of the hottest geothermal sites in the world, and next year it will start selling electricity to nearby homes and businesses.
But the start-up behind the project, Mazama Energy, wants to crank the temperature even higher — north of 750 degrees — and become the first to make electricity from what industry insiders call “superhot rock.”
Enthusiasts say that could usher in a new era of geothermal power, transforming the always-on clean energy source from a minor player to a major force in the world’s electricity systems.
“Geothermal has been mostly inconsequential,” said Vinod Khosla, a venture capitalist and one of Mazama Energy’s biggest financial backers. “To do consequential geothermal that matters at the scale of tens or hundreds of gigawatts for the country, and many times that globally, you really need to solve these high temperatures.”
Today, geothermal produces less than 1 percent of the world’s electricity. But tapping into superhot rock, along with other technological advances, could boost that share to 8 percent by 2050, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). Geothermal using superhot temperatures could theoretically generate 150 times more electricity than the world uses, according to the IEA.
“We believe this is the most direct path to driving down the cost of geothermal and making it possible across the globe,” said Terra Rogers, program director for superhot rock geothermal at the Clean Air Task Force, an environmentalist think tank. “The [technological] gaps are within reason. These are engineering iterations, not breakthroughs.”
A new kind of geothermal
The Newberry Volcano project combines two big trends that could make geothermal energy cheaper and more widely available.First, Mazama Energy is bringing its own water to the volcano, using a method called “enhanced geothermal energy.”
Historically, people have been able to use geothermal energy only in rare locations that have hot rocks and underground water, creating natural pockets of steam. That limits conventional geothermal to a handful of hot spots in countries such as Japan, Iceland, Kenya and the American West....
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Can geothermal saunas be far behind?
