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comment by Cumol
Cumol  ·  1245 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Geothermal energy is poised for a big breakout

I read this and got excited. Sent it to a friend of mine who was managing the governmen-funded solar programs in Israel and got the following response:

    I would be very surprised if it would become a major element in the energy mix. Wind and Solar are the name of the game. Geothermal is too site-specific and too expensive.

    this chart (levelized cost of electricity), for example. Is complete bullshit. solar and wind are 30-50$ / MWh nowadays. so basically this potential "breakthrough" would bring, at best, Geothermal energy to the existing costs of solar and wind

So I asked "So someone did not do their homework?"

    No my dear friend, if you need massive breakthrough just to get to the high ranges of costs of where wind and solar are NOW, when improvement in those markets will put them at, say, 20-30$/MWh by the time that this magical breakthrough would come... that’s not such a great plan. That is not to say that with 50$/MWh GT won't have a place in the energy mix. There are other renewable technologies more expensive then that, such as Offshore wind or Waste to Energy, and I would also assume that in some geographic areas where radiation and/or wind regime are low - GT can be competitive with them... but it's anecdotal. the future is Onshore wind and solar PV, +batteries and from a certain point and on - hydrogen.

I guess it is not so spectacular but could mean that geothermal will become relevant.

And this recent analysis seems to support the reduction in costs for offshore wind and solar

https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-and-levelized-cost-of-storage-2020/





WanderingEng  ·  1244 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I think solar has two major advantages.

1. Construction is incredibly simple (compared to basically every other form of generation). Not that it's simple, but geothermal requires digging the thermal well and dealing with a boiler. Wind requires large foundations and large cranes. Solar is low complexity, high frequency construction. It's many small foundations.

2. Labor to run it is almost zero. Wind has this advantage, too. A geothermal plant will have 24/7 staff, but a solar plant probably has zero permanent staff and just a couple people who rotate between several plants to do routine maintenance like weed and rodent control.

I work in the utility business. Utilities are notoriously conservative (not meaning politically). Reliability is king, though the fight against "money" for that supremacy is real. That means there's a skepticism around batteries. It isn't a question of whether a battery could theoretically solve some future problem, it's more that there's question of whether a battery can be relied on today to solve a reliability problem at an affordable price.

Geothermal's one advantage here is it doesn't need a battery to provide continuous output.

I think the industry is collectively waiting for someone else to prove the reliability and business case for solar + batteries. Everyone is ready to pounce, but nobody is quite moving yet.