Great research and presentation - thanks! I'm actually okay with fracking in the oil and gas industry as well as efforts such as this. Wind and solar need to sit on the bench for awhile, and frankly have larger potential for long-term environmental damage in my mind than fracking for fossil fuel extraction. Now that you know where I'm coming from, I have a large-scale question that was unasked in your video. What is the potential long-term effect of removing heat from the Earth's crust? Admittedly this is a small effect, like asking "what is the effect of slowing the natural movement of the air above us from wind energy production?"; but it is real and quantifiable just the same. As geothermal production of various sorts scales up, it could become an issue. Any thoughts?
Conducting heat from the earths interior (outward) while you simultaneously leak cooling waters into it on a large scale will cause the earths interior to cool at a much more rapid rate than it would otherwise. Cooling a planets interior is the progressive march of that planet toward a frigid death, not to mention the magnetic impacts as you do
Sounds alright but I think this is going to cost Google. I think the price of Geothermal has 10-20 year ROI unlike solar and batteries which is 10 years and below. I mean, if solar is cheap, just overbuild it and throw the excess energy or maybe run additional cooling equipment. Aside from that, solar has little maintenance or high reliability.
So all of the energy it took it to build the buildings and the wires and the plastic and everything is all renewable? I don't even get me started about carbon credits those are scam
My brother worked at the Geysers Geothermal Power plant in northern California. At the time it was the largest geothermal plant in the world. He said keeping the equipment running was a major challenge because the steam contained a lot of sulphur. The sulphur combined with water created Sulphuric Acid which ate away the equipment. When he took me on a tour of the plant, I saw a huge mountain of sulphur on the ground.
Yeah, this seems to be the problem with geothermal in volcanic zones. It's easier to access but the ground water is gas/mineral-tainted and that's without considering the impact on geo-stability. That said, a green mining side-gig doesn't sound too bad. Deeper drilling in non/less active zones would make more sense and may result in better geo-stability too but the cost must be much higher. Bring on magnetron drilling.
My father was a chemist in the automotive paint business. He worked for a small business and developed the first water based metallic automotive paint. Everyone thought it was impossible. Once he had it, his competitors all said they would have theirs within 6 months to a year. He explained to me that once something is proven possible it becomes easier because then others know they are not wasting their time with trial and error. The invention of the blue diode was the same, impossible until it wasn't. Great episode.
@@nick2128 it was a small company in Tampa called American Laquer and solvents. Got bought by Lily and then shut down. My father developed Amerflint 1 and 2 as well as a slew of primers and other products. The Water based product was called HydroFlint until Lily bought the company.
There is a version of these horizontal geothermal wells that dispenses with the fracking, and instead uses a closed system. The pipes are sealed, so the water pumped in is exactly the same as the water pumped out, and as a result none of the water is lost, and no nasty minerals are extracted that can corrode the pipes, pumps, and heat exchangers. For the same flow rate, less heat is extracted, but the reduced cost of maintaining the system and no loss of water underground more than makes up for it. Hopefully Google will try a system like this next.
“Less heat is extracted?” Seems like this would require longer vertical pathways and more extensive drilling (unless I’ve missed something.) That means a longer project timeline and a higher drilling costs (pipe, manpower, diamond bits).
@@derekboyt3383 yes but these costs could amortize along a longer timeline of far less maintenance of the turbines. Corrosive stuff mixed with hi temp steam means tons of downtime.
Actually, Eavor makes closed-loops systems where water goes in and out through a single looped well. This system is very different from enhanced geothermal which requires water to permeate through the rock from the injection well to the production well, absorbing heat along the way
@@ipp_tutor Wish Ricky would do something on Eavor. It seems too good to be true. Having the wells intersect each other, then form a circuit that can cycle fluid without leaking very much defies all my experience with plumbing. Supposedly they proved it could work 6 years ago. If it could, why isn’t it everywhere? Eavor is privately held, so there doesn’t seem to be a way to invest in it (maybe a good thing if it’s a scam).
Eavor has been operating a proof on concept plant in Alberta, Canada, and has also begun building a commercial plant in Germany. Its German plant’s output will be 8.2 megawatts of electrical powered, or 64 megawatts of thermal energy.
They have pretty much gone in the opposite direction since then, aligning with the forces of totalitarian control of information. Like other wealthy and powerful elitists, they despise the notion of human dignity for the masses, and see themselves as both qualified and entitled to control the people and enslave them.
I think it was reported on Disruptive Investing TH-cam channel of a company doing similar, but they drilled 2 wells and did between well directional drilling to connect the two main wells with several 'cross connects' underground without fracking. They put a cement liner on the ENTIRE well 'matrix' then pump water into the 'injection' well till it starts coming out the 'production wells', and then the water goes through a heat exchanger, but all the fluid gets re-pumped into the injection well. After a few 'circuits' or cycles through they can bypass the pump and it basically pumps itself. Their wells are also not super deep and they have a pilot plant running in west Texas if I remember right. ... Best part, no fracking and no continual loss of 'fluid'. ... Just thought you might like to hear about it.
By sealing, that should help avoid or at least reduce, the risk of harmful contamination of the water by minerals already present in the geological stratum through which the tunnels are created.
I'm from east of France, where we have some of the first enhanced-geothermal well... that had to be stopped because it triggered earthquakes. Turned out that fracking in a seismic active zone was a bad idea, whou could have thought ?...
With geothermal you are effectively constantly pushing high pressure water into fracture zones if you specifically use fracking to increase the size of the fractures or not. High pressure water not only works to space the local fractures apart but also works as a lubricant to allow easier slipping on large scale faults. You can argue that the faults would slip eventually anyway producing a single large earthquake rather than loads of smaller ones. (I don’t think anyone has shown that is actually the case though)
Suprised you didn’t mention Eavor’s “closed-loop” alternative to fracking for geothermal energy. It also uses horizontal drilling for hot water, but avoids the water loss and resulting risks of destabilizing surface structures and causing earthquakes.
Eavor is game changer, I hope everything is going well in their current projects. I too was surprised that Google did not include them in this project as the publicity generated would be a god send for the entire industry. Next to fusion reactors and molten salt reactors this technology would solve the entire electrical energy production a billion times over.
Agreed, I don't want to find out the hard way what the unintended consequences of geothermal at large scale and operated over long periods of time are. Maybe I am wrong but I don't believe we really understand deep earth geology over long time periods well enough to rule out problems. Nuclear and solar are much less invasive and better understood.
The unseen cost of maintaining a nuclear is a big reason to not make that main source. It's another military grade security detail to watch over and also the many SQ miles surrounding the plant that would be unusable for safety. just with this space you can just put solar and batteries for less upfront cost and virtually no maintenance more output per total sq miles allotted
You should look into the new SMR energy solutions. Small Modular Reactors. Much improved and evolved from what is envisioned when thinking of nuclear. It's not only worthy of consideration but could arguably be a most favored method of energy creation.
If you look at current information, the fracking industry uses ingredients that are typically categorized as food products in order to avoid any of the toxicity risks. Toxic chemicals have been out of favor in the IS for some time.
Great video Ricky! As a Nevada resident, it warms my heart to see this! The disappearing water doesn't surprise me, after all our entire state is desert.
"14 acres of California almonds use 17M liters of water" is true, but not exactly. Plants evaporate this water, and by doing so they cool air a bit, and adds water to clouds. And water from clouds tends to return to earth somewhere as rain. So water spent on agriculture is used but not wasted, while if you pump it underground, or pollute it in a factory, it will be true waste.
@Formulabruce Incorrect. I suggest learning how coal plants use water. It can be anthracite, bituminous, lignite or even the poop you want to use. It's still going to use about the same amount of water per MWh.
Another "level" is to place your servers near a company that needs low temperature (pre) heating of some input (water perhaps). Thus cool water heated by the servers is supplied to the neighbour pre-heated thus saving the energy. The user pays the server co. so many cents per kWh of heat but at a rate less than the cost of natural gas.
Great point! Maybe, since these can be used for server farms, they create a big pool of water and create submersed server rooms that contain the servers (obviously with a way in and out for server access). In the pool, have the server rooms on “stilts” to allow pool water to circulate around the entire room. Design the internal server room to optimize air flow around the servers. Water surrounds the server rooms, cooling the servers while preheating the water) at the start of the heat transfer process. Any corrosion concerns can be addressed on the external walls of the submersed server rooms. To control the pool water, may need to create bypass pipe(s) with temp managed valves (adjusting flow based on pool temp). Don’t know how feasible or impactful but if lots of energy is spent trying to cool servers, maybe they could benefit a little on both sides of the wall.
@@tomatodanger Much simpler to simply blow air heated by the servers through heat exchangers to warm the water; this cools the cooling air (of course) and the warmed water can be sent next door for whatever that process is. Meter the amount of water and the change in temperature and that is the energy transfer. eg: 1 m^3 heated by 10°C* is 0.66 kWh of energy. (*Should say 10K, but that confuses people 2 ways).
@@AlanTheBeast100 nice! Far fewer moving parts (and submersion concerns 😄) to preheat the water and still a potential drop in electricity required to cool the server farms as the cooled water can be used to reduce and control the temp of air entering the fans.
No question directional boring geothermal is a game changer. I'm pulling for the company (name escapes me) that is using the same technology, minus the fracking, and uses a closed loop system. Geothermal is the perfect answer for data centers, and with a constant load, there's no need for any power source other than geothermal.
If they are pumping that much extra water into the injection well, it means the local aquifer will rise, they'll probably dig some other standard wells in the area around the plant to pull out water and monitor the static water level. Also, I'm surprised you didn't mention that the plant was just a few miles away from the Tesla giga factory. 😂
In many areas adding water to the local aquifer would be a feature, not a bug. Across the US we've been depleting our water table faster than it refills. With favorable placement (i.e., next to a reservoir of sufficient capacity) the "water loss" would delight local farmers as their water tables improved or shrank at a slower rate.
@@BramWarrick in a normal place that would be true, but this test facility right now is just up in the hills without anything super close by really. It's kinda isolated.
@@BramWarrick in this case this would be a disaster waiting to happen. The fresh water is injected at depth and it is displacing naturally toxic brine that you have at that depth. Any water that eventually comes up is not the fresh water injected but the brine that is displaced upwards. I would be highly concerned if you inject more than you produce. The only way to replenish fresh water in the water table is with fresh water from above (rain, rivers, underground flows of fresh water). The reason in shale oil wells the water is re injected is not the chemicals added. It is the toxicity of the brine water that came back up.
My Aunt is a member of the sub 4 club. Her first attempt at the Ironman triathalon she placed second for women. She went to school learning about the mind, and used what she learned to put her brain in the right place to do well. Now she teaches olympians to do what she did. I remember running across the golden gate bridge with her, and learning about pacing from her at a young age.
The oil industry's fracking fluid is so toxic they refuse to disclose what it's made from. Hopefully this project will be transparent on all of its methods and ingredients.
It was super toxic, but the oil and gas industry is moving away from those chemicals to processes that use cheaper, less toxic, and more readily available ingredients. This is why they have been able to expand out of their original plays on Texas and North Dakota.
11:09 - Since the Philippines is in the Pacific Ring of Fire, it has geothermal potential. Actually, it has a handful of geothermal power plants in operation: 1. Mak-Ban (Makiling-Banahaw) 2. Tiwi 3. Bac-Man (Bacon-Manito) 4. Panlipinon 5. Malitbog
Yes, you're right. The biggest problem with geothermal so far is the fact that it's only economically viable in places like the Ring of Fire or in Iceland where hot rock is very shallow.. This system has the potential to make it economically viable in other locations, which I think is awesome!
And a lot of it is wrong. I wondered why I stopped watching his videos. I recognized the name from the past and he popped up a bit lately. Watching this reminded me why is stopped. I know enough to know when a number of statements he made are just false and a couple had to be them knowingly lying.
In germany several city's used to have geothermal and had severe problems to buildings just started to falling apart. It makes unstable ground and it starts to move and devastate roads and houses
One solution for the difficulties for horizontal drilling is to make a "V" drilling, that will allow use simpler equipaments and processes.letting two plants far from each one.
I would ask the question why all of the social media companies have been funding, operating and now owning electrical and gas facilities across the United States as well. Google is finishing a diesel facility as we speak. They already own control of tons of infrastructure, and now they are controlling the electric grid as well!!!!!
Great episode Ricky! Studied geothermal as part of my alternative energy course work back in the 80's and checked out the geothermal plant im Mammoth when I lived there. Always saw it as an underutilized technology.
Australia has had at least 47 geothermal power plant projects, all have now been abandoned as being uneconomic unfortunately, including the Cooper basin one, you showed on the graphs. Hopefully Google is successful long term - maybe they aren't as constrained by economics.
The better efficiency of the enhanced system combined with the much longer injection and production wells made possible by horizontal drilling makes this design more economically viable, not to mention the benefit of controlled output, a first in the industry!
I’m sure Google’s attorneys and accountants are also keeping a lookout for any favorable subsidies…especially from this administration. I’d wager they have some ‘campaign contributions’ to pay back.
The footage clearly shows a piston reciprocating piston device. It is not a "Turbine." In 1973 ,exploring New Zealand, I visited a thermal power plant. Bores brought up superheated water which was put though heat exchangers, to produce steam, which could then be utilized to drive turbines. The negative aspect of this was that minerals in the steam deposited mineral in the piping, eventually closing the diameter of the bore and requiring periodic drilling to create a new passage to the surface. Free steam, at a drilling cost, was, as it is said, :Fruit on the sideboard.
The elephant is not fracking, it is cost. Employing fracking to extract profitable hydrocarbons is a net profit, but drilling and fracking for hot water is a much harder business case. Enhanced geothermal today often tries to extract lithium etc to create another revenue stream. Remember: geothermal electricity competes with electricity produced more cheaply by solar, hydro, or wind. Price is often (not always) the deciding factor.
Solar and wind can never compete as base production, they compete in fluctuating production. Hydro is only one of these that you can actually controll as long as you have water.
@@lauriviik But they do compete already because they're feeding into the big leveling grid. The concept of caseload is now being reshaped. When utilities put out bids for generation it is now almost always for "solar + battery" - and it still comes out cheaper than oil & gas.
Ricky congrats! Ive been following you since the beginning. You really stepped up your game and your reports are top notch. Unique, in depth and interesting. Talking about geothermal I witnesed two stages of project Miravalle in Costa Rica atnthenslopes of a vulcano. The problem was the minerals that deposited quickly on the pipes clogging the system
They should combine this with a gravity battery using stored water. This would eliminate the need for any other power production and they need water storage as it is.
Thanks for the video, this is a great project. But reliance upon a large, centralized grid causes all the "peaking" problems. If every conceivable rooftop had solar panels and all those buildings had batteries suitable for their own peak needs, the grid would only be backup. A decentralized grid and storage system would also be strategically much more durable, making this a national defense priority that is being ignored at our peril.
Sure. On a Star Trek episode. I personally don’t have enough property to satisfy all my energy requirements, plus I still need a patch to let my dogs out. Not sure I want to purchase, install, maintain, and upgrade my ‘strategically durable’ solar contraption when I can just flip a switch and use power from a grid that has been 99.999999% reliable and available. Sorry for being cynical, but these pie in the sky ideas spewed with little awareness of regional, state, and national scope realities, along with financial ramifications, actual economic benefits, what additional bureaucracies will the DOE create to manage this distributed nightmare, and of who or what is going to pay for ANOTHER redundant power grid? I’m not certain how it makes sense to fund and build a brand new supplement to something that mainly works well? Why not invest in buttressing the grid we have? Why not look at instead investing the $tens of billions into something practical, proven, better, and ultimately required when the anti nuke activists die off, hostile bureaucrats from regulatory agencies retire (and/or die off), and a pro nuclear political and social will take over because eventually fossil fuels will become too expensive and solar and wind still won’t make economic or technical sense as a primary energy source? Whatever, sorry - now I’m just rambling.
@@ronjon7942The grid around here does not work well any more. It fails often and then burns a few towns and millions of trees. Plus, there have been many recent terrorist attack on grid infrastructure. A decentralized power grid is a huge strategic gain. Even something like a huge solar storm could not black out large areas if the grid and storage was decentralized. Rooftop solar and lithium storage batteries are commonplace and work well. No science fiction here, just clean reliable power that can't be knocked out nearly as easily as a large centralized grid.
Not everyone will be able to purchase and maintain their own level of energy independence. I picture a future where those that can provide some "or most" of their own energy needs will do so while also "assisting" the grid with residual energy after the home batteries are "topped off". The main grid will store that residual energy to help offset non-green sources. During the times when residential "suppliers" become "consumers" the main grid will function as normal. This ticks most boxes, a level of energy independence for those that "want 'it, increased green energy for those that "can't afford" or "don't want" it installed on their homes, and the grid isn't under a constant level of strain to produce and distribute.
Ricki, some of the information on fracking is out of date. The fracking industries have either stopped using the most toxic chemicals or rapidly moving away from them. In addition, water use is no longer a major concern since they now use brackish ground water using extracted from the area. Turns out one of the major additives used in traditional fracking is salt. By using this brackish ground water, they don't have to use fresh water with all of it's complications such as algae and other organic contamination they can inject the used brackish water back where it came from.
It's a good point. But is that for the oil&gas industry or for enhanced geothermal? I'm pretty sure you won't be able to use saltwater for energy production in the turbines.
@@ipp_tutornuclear plants near the sea exchange heat with ocean without contaminating the turbine water. That stuff has to be insanely pristine. Measured down to the parts per billion to verify it's pure.
@@dertythegrower The mechanical and chemical description of this fracking process sound simpler and cheaper than the original process. This means you don't need regulations to enforce it's use, just someone who understand more money more better. Is there some other additional difficulty that arises?
Awesome job. Amazing research especially on what makes this power plant different (and better) than other gethermal/enhanced geothermal projects. Thank you for your hard work!
While I'm a fan of residential geothermal, the need for industrial geothermal plants to use deep fracking processes is an absolute no-go in my mind. Living in Oklahoma where fracking became a major method of extraction for a while before being severely limited, we experienced house-damaging earthquakes and shaking weekly. The weekly shifting of the ground rocked the framing back and forth loosening the nails, created leaks in roofs by creating gaps in roof decking and drove wildlife to run from the shaking right across freeways. Oklahoma oil producers reaped the energy, while we paid for the repairs and foundation issues to our homes. So, I would recommend Google keep looking for other ways to be 100% carbon neutral. If anyone can do it, they can!
I'm excited to see Geothermal used more. It makes a lot of sense. It would be cool if Google was able to find a use for the waste heat from their servers as well. Thanks for this story!
Google does put use to their waste heat. For many datacenters, they use that heat for things like swimming pools, various farming practices, wood pellet production, or just simply a building heat source in winter. Personally, I think it'd be a good idea to purify sea water, since that's normally a very energy-intensive process. I imagine Google could probably use heat pumps to concentrate the heat for applications that require a higher heat output. They could even make a steam turbine but I'm sure the energy they gain from that wouldn't make up for the cost of building it.
That's a good point,@@Toastmaster_5000. Geothermal desalination is definitely a thing. If we could only figure out how to couple energy production and desalination, we could get a consistent supply of freshwater for the system from seawater
Google has the privilege to spend money wildly because of the monetization of the search engine has created a stupid amount of wealth. Don’t assume that they are more virtuous than other companies, just so rich they can spend in extremely risky ventures.
Danger. It's not an infinite source. It cools the earth's core, which at some point stops spinning and the protective atmosphere gets stripped away like Mars.
Thanks for another great article Ricky Please check out the company Eavor and their eavor-loop geothermal system. They have developed a closed system much like an underground radiator which has little or no fluid loss to the rock also they claim far lower circulation energy as the system is partially powered by thermal cycle I would love to see your evaluation of their process
That's a great idea! I like the concept behind the eaverloop. However, that system is quite limited in terms of heat extraction rates compared to EGS, unless you literally drill a radiator with multiple loops and coils.
Eavor loop is running a city in Germany starting this year .Home heating and electricity . Hot baby!@@ipp_tutorThey are drilling in New Mexico as well. Geothermal can work anywhere on earth! Its a game changer! Geretsreid Germany
So I know heated waters from the mantle have dissolved metals and silica and that is the mechanism for most geological concentrations of resources we mine(which a billion exceptions) does anyone else here have a feeling there's a way to exploit that while also harvesting geothermal energy? So the metals and other minerals drop out of solution/solidify when pressure and temperature drop, so I'm curious if there's a way to incorporate a way to harvest the minerals in an economic way. Im curious if it will negatively effect the water table. Im curious if being near an ocean or sea and creating infrastructure to feed sea water rather then drinking water to the depths we'd want instead of drinking water. The risk of steam explosions or unforeseen geological events is a possibility I imagine.
I think geothermal is a great concept. In the state of NV extra water is not available. When looking for the location of Project Red I also found another plant is being constructed in Southwestern UT. Another state that is experiencing water shortages in the Southern part of the state. Probably a concern that is not a big concern.
I instantly drew the same conclusion about geothermal fracking. It's what is done to the water supply that is the major problem, that is specifically due to toxic chemicals that apply only to fossil fuel extraction, so unless they are injecting the same or other toxic chemicals into the ground for geothermal purposes that I am unaware of, the biggest fracking concern doesn't apply. The geologic stability concern still applies, and that still needs to be talked about. One might expect that to be a deal breaker in California, a state that already has a problem with geologic instability, but on the other hand, the existing potential for earthquakes also means that California is perhaps the best place to accept this risk because their infrastructure is already engineered to accommodate it. The last issue, as you mentioned, is water usage, and in some places that is a huge concern now, and will likely be a big concern in more places in the future. Considering the long-standing and worsening water supply problem over much of the US southwest, that seems like it might make the idea a nonstarter where many of Alphabet's operations are based, unless they can figure out a way to offset their water consumption. This would effectively convert Google's conservation problem from carbon zero to water zero. Fascinating video! Thanks for posting it!
Hydro fracking is also used in low production water wells, to open up the granite cracks so that the water can flow more efficiently/freely from the aquifer.
@@dertythegrower Of course, they're not the same substances. That's precisely my point, and it's why I say people have a misconception about fracking being used in the context of ESG, thinking it's the same as in the oil industry. But whatever gives you the right of way to showcase your experience...
I really like your deep dive into the tradeoffs. I think that putting water underground is not as much as a problem at it seems. It you pair the geothermal plant with aquifer drains like into agriculture, then you could get out that excess water that is going elsewhere. You could even, I don't know, drill a bigger injection well, (twice the size) and a second extraction well down in order to get more of the water in percentage. Something like that.
I work for Mercury Energy in NZ. We have a few Geothermal plants, but it's not my focus as mine is Hydro. You (Google) have glossed over far too many issues. Continue your research, please. There won't be many (if any) new hydro plants and for good reason. For even better reasons, there should not be many new geothermal investments.
If I remember correctly, it's largely the waste water disposal from fracking that has been linked to earthquakes. The USGS reported that more waste water was put into the wells then when fracking was in progress, which they believe is the big reason for increased earthquakes. TLDR, no waste water=far, far fewer quakes.
The water use by the pilot plant isn't that great in the scheme of things if its located on a large lot let say tens of acres then 17 million gallons could be collected during a good rain storm if the drainage is managed properly. The biggest challenge is constructing a cistern that would hold that much water.
I love your channel however your rant on fracking is ill informed and not true. I've worked in energy for 12 years now mostly in exploration and completion, I am a pipe welder. I would like to invite you at anytime for a tour of any fracking site I work on and show you how safe and amazing it is. Thanks
Thanks for sharing your videos and updates on various technologies. Always been a big fan of geothermal energy. Last I heard test sights were being shutdown because of their ability to make earth quakes. This was long before fracking was even on the radar. Curious that that is still an issue over 30 years later. They really need to stop trying to make a short cut to getting the heat out of the ground from above. IE they need to put boots on the ground where they are needed even if it’s under ground in high temperature dry rock. They need to develop a functional closed loop system for energy production. Future video idea, possibly make a video about the efforts that Eric Sorensen has put into saving thorium liquid salt reactors from the dust bin of the past. Also the various benefits that they could provide. He has several vary long and dry informative videos that are very hard to watch but chocked full of details that are easy to overlook with each one individually being a game changer. Basically make a summary of his videos simplified and highlighted to show the how, why’s, and benefits simplified to open them up to the general public. Having had over 30 years in the power industry it took me several views of each of his long format videos to pick out as many benefits as I did and almost every one would be a game changer if it could be transferred to our current fleet of steam powered generators independent of prime mover. One of the biggest advantages was the ability of the reactor to be self regulated due to the science behind its design. It only makes more energy when you withdraw more energy. Stop taking power out it idles itself back to a steady state standby. As a power system operator that one is amazing. The fact that it is self controlled is probably the scariest part of its design. There are very few control inputs because they simply are unnecessary and would likely mess it up thru operator input. It’s truly a walk away safe design.
I'm so happy I made productive decisions about my finances that changed my life forever,hoping to retire next year.. Investment should always be on any creative man's heart for success in life
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Wow. I'm a bit perplexed seeing him been mentioned here also Didn't know he has been good to so many people too this is wonderful, i'm in my fifth trade with him and it has been super
I don't want to put a figure to how much i've made doing that but let's just say it's more than enough to make trading worthwhile. And when i say worthwhile, i mean it.
I was thinking and maybe Google is successful in this project and even develops it further for the world. Right after I thought about this the term UMBRELLA CORPORATION popped into my head.
Another difference with the fracking is that they're only doing it once to set up the infrastructure, as opposed to the gas industry where they need to constantly frack new passageways to get more oil.
Our school district installed a 180-well closed loop geothermal system for heating one of our high school buildings. The system worked well for a couple of years until they noticed that the Delta-T was decreasing. Each year the water temp coming from the field was getting nearer to the return temp to the field. Seems the field could not recover fast enough to keep the water hot. They tried to return the heat by running the AC all summer to pump heat back into the field but this didn't well and was costly. They finally had to install natural gas boilers to help on the colder parts of winter. Not certain that they ever saved money or were able to keep their LEED ratings.
Thanks for this episode, makes me happy that I brought google at IPO and am holding long. Stock doing well and will do even better with innovations like this going forward.
I've been rooting for (and unsuccessfully trying to both contribute to and invest in) geothermal power for many years. I've had many of the same questions you did. Thank you for doing all that research! It's very helpful.
The last I heard (some years ago), The Geysers in California was no longer producing 900 MW. Because of excessive extraction and lower water levels, the output had dropped to 500-600 MW.
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Great research and presentation - thanks! I'm actually okay with fracking in the oil and gas industry as well as efforts such as this. Wind and solar need to sit on the bench for awhile, and frankly have larger potential for long-term environmental damage in my mind than fracking for fossil fuel extraction. Now that you know where I'm coming from, I have a large-scale question that was unasked in your video. What is the potential long-term effect of removing heat from the Earth's crust? Admittedly this is a small effect, like asking "what is the effect of slowing the natural movement of the air above us from wind energy production?"; but it is real and quantifiable just the same. As geothermal production of various sorts scales up, it could become an issue. Any thoughts?
Conducting heat from the earths interior (outward) while you simultaneously leak cooling waters into it on a large scale will cause the earths interior to cool at a much more rapid rate than it would otherwise. Cooling a planets interior is the progressive march of that planet toward a frigid death, not to mention the magnetic impacts as you do
I burst out laughing when you used "Harry Potter" as a verb instead of a name, lol.
Sounds alright but I think this is going to cost Google. I think the price of Geothermal has 10-20 year ROI unlike solar and batteries which is 10 years and below. I mean, if solar is cheap, just overbuild it and throw the excess energy or maybe run additional cooling equipment. Aside from that, solar has little maintenance or high reliability.
So all of the energy it took it to build the buildings and the wires and the plastic and everything is all renewable? I don't even get me started about carbon credits those are scam
My brother worked at the Geysers Geothermal Power plant in northern California. At the time it was the largest geothermal plant in the world. He said keeping the equipment running was a major challenge because the steam contained a lot of sulphur. The sulphur combined with water created Sulphuric Acid which ate away the equipment. When he took me on a tour of the plant, I saw a huge mountain of sulphur on the ground.
WOW!!
❌ Carbon Neutrality & Carbon Credits are SCAMS ❌
❌Even ARAMCO Saudi Oil is ESG🤢🤢🤮
Yeah, this seems to be the problem with geothermal in volcanic zones. It's easier to access but the ground water is gas/mineral-tainted and that's without considering the impact on geo-stability. That said, a green mining side-gig doesn't sound too bad.
Deeper drilling in non/less active zones would make more sense and may result in better geo-stability too but the cost must be much higher. Bring on magnetron drilling.
Yellowstone. Ya. Drill baby drill.
Nothing is ever simple, is it? Sometimes I feel it's a miracle we get anything done at all. Human beings are so resourceful it's just amazing.
My father was a chemist in the automotive paint business. He worked for a small business and developed the first water based metallic automotive paint. Everyone thought it was impossible. Once he had it, his competitors all said they would have theirs within 6 months to a year. He explained to me that once something is proven possible it becomes easier because then others know they are not wasting their time with trial and error. The invention of the blue diode was the same, impossible until it wasn't. Great episode.
What company ?
This is exactly why no one will invest in Strong AI - no proof, high costs, and 10-20 year lead times.
@@nick2128 it was a small company in Tampa called American Laquer and solvents. Got bought by Lily and then shut down. My father developed Amerflint 1 and 2 as well as a slew of primers and other products. The Water based product was called HydroFlint until Lily bought the company.
There is a version of these horizontal geothermal wells that dispenses with the fracking, and instead uses a closed system. The pipes are sealed, so the water pumped in is exactly the same as the water pumped out, and as a result none of the water is lost, and no nasty minerals are extracted that can corrode the pipes, pumps, and heat exchangers. For the same flow rate, less heat is extracted, but the reduced cost of maintaining the system and no loss of water underground more than makes up for it. Hopefully Google will try a system like this next.
Eavor is a company experimenting in this , hopefully they get big backing from Google too
“Less heat is extracted?”
Seems like this would require longer vertical pathways and more extensive drilling (unless I’ve missed something.) That means a longer project timeline and a higher drilling costs (pipe, manpower, diamond bits).
Its under construction in California and Arizona and Germany TOO! Hot baby and its clean and safe and long lasting.@@katiegreene3960
@@derekboyt3383 yes but these costs could amortize along a longer timeline of far less maintenance of the turbines. Corrosive stuff mixed with hi temp steam means tons of downtime.
Do we necessarily have to have corrosive minerals in the water? I thought that would depend on the geology of the terrain.
Canadian company Eavor does the same thing without the fracking. Nice to see this underground tech emerging.
Actually, Eavor makes closed-loops systems where water goes in and out through a single looped well. This system is very different from enhanced geothermal which requires water to permeate through the rock from the injection well to the production well, absorbing heat along the way
@@ipp_tutor Wish Ricky would do something on Eavor. It seems too good to be true. Having the wells intersect each other, then form a circuit that can cycle fluid without leaking very much defies all my experience with plumbing. Supposedly they proved it could work 6 years ago. If it could, why isn’t it everywhere? Eavor is privately held, so there doesn’t seem to be a way to invest in it (maybe a good thing if it’s a scam).
EGS/fracking has a limited lifespan. Seems Eavor have a big advantage because their underground pipes won't degrade as fast, or at all.
Eavor has been operating a proof on concept plant in Alberta, Canada, and has also begun building a commercial plant in Germany. Its German plant’s output will be 8.2 megawatts of electrical powered, or 64 megawatts of thermal energy.
@@AnthonyBouttellDo you know what is the cost of the whole operation from drilling to setting up geothermal power plant system. Thank you
They actually dropped the "don't be evil" mantra. Like it was worth anything anyway.
"dont be evil" and "capitalism" are diametrically opposing ideas.
Capitalism is just free trade and private ownership. Your alternative is much worse.@@GhostDrow
I think it’s been changed now to: “Sorta Evil”.
No?! Literally the last paragraph.
"And remember... don’t be evil, and if you see something that you think isn’t right - speak up!"
They have pretty much gone in the opposite direction since then, aligning with the forces of totalitarian control of information. Like other wealthy and powerful elitists, they despise the notion of human dignity for the masses, and see themselves as both qualified and entitled to control the people and enslave them.
Google actually removed the "don't be evil" thing.
Replaced with the motto "Greed Is Good".
Well they just removed the "don't".
They started paying influencers instead, apparently
takes a lot of oil to run a company the size of google
Google - 2000: "Don't be evil"
Google - 2010: "Our policy has changed."
2024 "Try not to get caught being evil"
They dropped the "Don't" part.
Google - 2020: “We own you, get over it”
@@worldadventuremanHa. Good1.
2024 "We record your evil, comply or be disconnected"
I think it was reported on Disruptive Investing TH-cam channel of a company doing similar, but they drilled 2 wells and did between well directional drilling to connect the two main wells with several 'cross connects' underground without fracking. They put a cement liner on the ENTIRE well 'matrix' then pump water into the 'injection' well till it starts coming out the 'production wells', and then the water goes through a heat exchanger, but all the fluid gets re-pumped into the injection well. After a few 'circuits' or cycles through they can bypass the pump and it basically pumps itself. Their wells are also not super deep and they have a pilot plant running in west Texas if I remember right. ... Best part, no fracking and no continual loss of 'fluid'. ... Just thought you might like to hear about it.
I think your thinking of eavor ? Hopefully they get big backing too
Eavor is just like this with a secret seal, like cement. Geothermal in the Arctic! anywhere!
Yeah this sounds like Eavor. Their first commercial plant is under construction in Germany right now.
By sealing, that should help avoid or at least reduce, the risk of harmful contamination of the water by minerals already present in the geological stratum through which the tunnels are created.
Decarbonization is 21st century cathedral/pyramid building.
It is the orchestrated, imposed human sacrifice for a superstition.
Fracking... it's litterally groundbreaking ;)
I'm from east of France, where we have some of the first enhanced-geothermal well... that had to be stopped because it triggered earthquakes.
Turned out that fracking in a seismic active zone was a bad idea, whou could have thought ?...
Fracking in petroleum production turned seismically inactive parts Oklahoma into minor earthquake zones.
With geothermal you are effectively constantly pushing high pressure water into fracture zones if you specifically use fracking to increase the size of the fractures or not.
High pressure water not only works to space the local fractures apart but also works as a lubricant to allow easier slipping on large scale faults.
You can argue that the faults would slip eventually anyway producing a single large earthquake rather than loads of smaller ones. (I don’t think anyone has shown that is actually the case though)
@@75Froggie I expect OK to eventually become a giant sinkhole.
@@AZOffRoadster 🤣
@@glenecollins and what if the passage is lined, so that there's nearly no leaking into the ground?
I’ve seen the geothermal power plant in Iceland. Of course their access to hot steam is far easier than most locations around globe
Suprised you didn’t mention Eavor’s “closed-loop” alternative to fracking for geothermal energy. It also uses horizontal drilling for hot water, but avoids the water loss and resulting risks of destabilizing surface structures and causing earthquakes.
Its a Canadian company. The whole world is not loving Alberta oil. Those boys and girls know how to drill!
@@fayebird1808 well, we’ll try not to hold that against them 😏
Yeah I thought the same thing. Might be less efficient but eliminates all the fracking related problems.
Eavor is game changer, I hope everything is going well in their current projects. I too was surprised that Google did not include them in this project as the publicity generated would be a god send for the entire industry. Next to fusion reactors and molten salt reactors this technology would solve the entire electrical energy production a billion times over.
Google out here building the most expensive Rube Goldberg machine. God forbid we make nuclear power plants...
Agreed, I don't want to find out the hard way what the unintended consequences of geothermal at large scale and operated over long periods of time are.
Maybe I am wrong but I don't believe we really understand deep earth geology over long time periods well enough to rule out problems. Nuclear and solar are much less invasive and better understood.
The unseen cost of maintaining a nuclear is a big reason to not make that main source. It's another military grade security detail to watch over and also the many SQ miles surrounding the plant that would be unusable for safety. just with this space you can just put solar and batteries for less upfront cost and virtually no maintenance more output per total sq miles allotted
What is your problem with nuclear energy?
That should be the next video
You should look into the new SMR energy solutions. Small Modular Reactors. Much improved and evolved from what is envisioned when thinking of nuclear. It's not only worthy of consideration but could arguably be a most favored method of energy creation.
google removed "don't be evil" from their tenets years ago....they didn't just forget. It was done intentionally.
If you look at current information, the fracking industry uses ingredients that are typically categorized as food products in order to avoid any of the toxicity risks. Toxic chemicals have been out of favor in the IS for some time.
I wonder how quickly they would abandon this
Decarbonization is 21st century cathedral/pyramid building.
It is the orchestrated, imposed human sacrifice for a superstition.
I wonder how much heat u can extract before y affect the rotating globe????
“Ground breaking” 😂 I see what you ďid there
that made me break a smile.
hey GOOGLE.....this sounds like a great place to use waste water thats "treated".....nobody cares if its "lost"
Fracking now has a system in place 'to reuse the chemicals by filtration 'so its some what cleaner then before.
Great story! Liked and subscribed. So, where is the extra water going? This HAS to be figured out before permits are issued.
The wind... isn't always blowing? I live in Oklahoma, if the wind stops, i get seriously nervous. They should just move here
Great video Ricky! As a Nevada resident, it warms my heart to see this! The disappearing water doesn't surprise me, after all our entire state is desert.
Just to put the water usage into perspective, 14 acres of California almonds use 17M liters of water. Last year they grew 1.63 million acres.
And a coal power plant producing the same amount of electricity would need over 30M gallons of water a year.
@@tomtxtx9617 Not a power plant making clean Coal from human waste.
"14 acres of California almonds use 17M liters of water" is true, but not exactly. Plants evaporate this water, and by doing so they cool air a bit, and adds water to clouds. And water from clouds tends to return to earth somewhere as rain.
So water spent on agriculture is used but not wasted, while if you pump it underground, or pollute it in a factory, it will be true waste.
@Formulabruce Incorrect. I suggest learning how coal plants use water. It can be anthracite, bituminous, lignite or even the poop you want to use. It's still going to use about the same amount of water per MWh.
@@arivaldarivald3212Except that rain falls elsewhere from whence it evaporated, so CA almost loses twice…or maybe once and a half.
Another "level" is to place your servers near a company that needs low temperature (pre) heating of some input (water perhaps). Thus cool water heated by the servers is supplied to the neighbour pre-heated thus saving the energy. The user pays the server co. so many cents per kWh of heat but at a rate less than the cost of natural gas.
Next to a swimming pool :)
Great point! Maybe, since these can be used for server farms, they create a big pool of water and create submersed server rooms that contain the servers (obviously with a way in and out for server access).
In the pool, have the server rooms on “stilts” to allow pool water to circulate around the entire room. Design the internal server room to optimize air flow around the servers.
Water surrounds the server rooms, cooling the servers while preheating the water) at the start of the heat transfer process. Any corrosion concerns can be addressed on the external walls of the submersed server rooms.
To control the pool water, may need to create bypass pipe(s) with temp managed valves (adjusting flow based on pool temp).
Don’t know how feasible or impactful but if lots of energy is spent trying to cool servers, maybe they could benefit a little on both sides of the wall.
@@tomatodanger Much simpler to simply blow air heated by the servers through heat exchangers to warm the water; this cools the cooling air (of course) and the warmed water can be sent next door for whatever that process is. Meter the amount of water and the change in temperature and that is the energy transfer.
eg: 1 m^3 heated by 10°C* is 0.66 kWh of energy.
(*Should say 10K, but that confuses people 2 ways).
@@AlanTheBeast100 nice! Far fewer moving parts (and submersion concerns 😄) to preheat the water and still a potential drop in electricity required to cool the server farms as the cooled water can be used to reduce and control the temp of air entering the fans.
IBM has done that at ETH in Zurich where water cooled servers are connected to building heating.
No question directional boring geothermal is a game changer. I'm pulling for the company (name escapes me) that is using the same technology, minus the fracking, and uses a closed loop system. Geothermal is the perfect answer for data centers, and with a constant load, there's no need for any power source other than geothermal.
Eavor
Rocky Mountain house Canada
2:45 - - chart - - 2:53 - - PPAs
4:06 - - data world-wide
12:33 - fervo
14:35 - - server rooms + pwr data cntr w 100% carbon-free energy
If they are pumping that much extra water into the injection well, it means the local aquifer will rise, they'll probably dig some other standard wells in the area around the plant to pull out water and monitor the static water level.
Also, I'm surprised you didn't mention that the plant was just a few miles away from the Tesla giga factory. 😂
In many areas adding water to the local aquifer would be a feature, not a bug. Across the US we've been depleting our water table faster than it refills. With favorable placement (i.e., next to a reservoir of sufficient capacity) the "water loss" would delight local farmers as their water tables improved or shrank at a slower rate.
@@BramWarrick in a normal place that would be true, but this test facility right now is just up in the hills without anything super close by really. It's kinda isolated.
@@BramWarrick in this case this would be a disaster waiting to happen. The fresh water is injected at depth and it is displacing naturally toxic brine that you have at that depth. Any water that eventually comes up is not the fresh water injected but the brine that is displaced upwards. I would be highly concerned if you inject more than you produce. The only way to replenish fresh water in the water table is with fresh water from above (rain, rivers, underground flows of fresh water). The reason in shale oil wells the water is re injected is not the chemicals added. It is the toxicity of the brine water that came back up.
My Aunt is a member of the sub 4 club. Her first attempt at the Ironman triathalon she placed second for women. She went to school learning about the mind, and used what she learned to put her brain in the right place to do well. Now she teaches olympians to do what she did. I remember running across the golden gate bridge with her, and learning about pacing from her at a young age.
Probably going to cancel it like every other project.
The oil industry's fracking fluid is so toxic they refuse to disclose what it's made from. Hopefully this project will be transparent on all of its methods and ingredients.
Yes.. and i invested into a company doing it in Casper Wyoming... super fishy town, 😮
Super documented, and you are correct.. and i (used to) invest into a small oil sand frack company my family ran but now its tanked in profits...
In 1953?@@dertythegrower
It was super toxic, but the oil and gas industry is moving away from those chemicals to processes that use cheaper, less toxic, and more readily available ingredients. This is why they have been able to expand out of their original plays on Texas and North Dakota.
well said, BUT when oil companies begin to improve their techniques we hear bugger all about their advancements... @@jerryinmon2731
11:09 - Since the Philippines is in the Pacific Ring of Fire, it has geothermal potential.
Actually, it has a handful of geothermal power plants in operation:
1. Mak-Ban (Makiling-Banahaw)
2. Tiwi
3. Bac-Man (Bacon-Manito)
4. Panlipinon
5. Malitbog
Yes, you're right. The biggest problem with geothermal so far is the fact that it's only economically viable in places like the Ring of Fire or in Iceland where hot rock is very shallow.. This system has the potential to make it economically viable in other locations, which I think is awesome!
@@ipp_tutor Equipment longevity is also a problem.
New Zealand has been using geothermal power for decades. I believe they have 1 GW capacity.
Damn, what a great video! Talk about a bad ass deep dive!!
Maybe Alex can do a video with Ricky on investment in Geothermal. Would love to see two of my favorite podcasters team up again.
@@jonathanbrown9002 Yeah! Good call man. Set it up, you guys!
@@jonathanbrown9002collab genius idea.. hope to see it
And a lot of it is wrong. I wondered why I stopped watching his videos. I recognized the name from the past and he popped up a bit lately.
Watching this reminded me why is stopped.
I know enough to know when a number of statements he made are just false and a couple had to be them knowingly lying.
In germany several city's used to have geothermal and had severe problems to buildings just started to falling apart. It makes unstable ground and it starts to move and devastate roads and houses
One solution for the difficulties for horizontal drilling is to make a "V" drilling, that will allow use simpler equipaments and processes.letting two plants far from each one.
I would ask the question why all of the social media companies have been funding, operating and now owning electrical and gas facilities across the United States as well. Google is finishing a diesel facility as we speak. They already own control of tons of infrastructure, and now they are controlling the electric grid as well!!!!!
How sinister of Google to seek clean energy.
Great episode Ricky! Studied geothermal as part of my alternative energy course work back in the 80's and checked out the geothermal plant im Mammoth when I lived there. Always saw it as an underutilized technology.
Australia has had at least 47 geothermal power plant projects, all have now been abandoned as being uneconomic unfortunately, including the Cooper basin one, you showed on the graphs.
Hopefully Google is successful long term - maybe they aren't as constrained by economics.
The better efficiency of the enhanced system combined with the much longer injection and production wells made possible by horizontal drilling makes this design more economically viable, not to mention the benefit of controlled output, a first in the industry!
The rocks cool down after 5 years.
yes by less than 10%. Never cold.@@bikingcat3283
I’m sure Google’s attorneys and accountants are also keeping a lookout for any favorable subsidies…especially from this administration. I’d wager they have some ‘campaign contributions’ to pay back.
AGW is a load of it.
Decarbonization is 21st century pyramid building.
Just burn coal.
AI and supercomputing takes massively amounts of energy!
The footage clearly shows a piston reciprocating piston device. It is not a "Turbine." In 1973 ,exploring New Zealand, I visited a thermal power plant. Bores brought up superheated water
which was put though heat exchangers, to produce steam, which could then be utilized to drive turbines. The negative aspect of this was that minerals in the steam deposited mineral in the piping, eventually closing the diameter of the bore and requiring periodic drilling to create a new passage to the surface. Free steam, at a drilling cost, was, as it is said, :Fruit on the sideboard.
Decarbonization is 21st century cathedral/pyramid building.
It is the orchestrated, imposed human sacrifice for a superstition.
The elephant is not fracking, it is cost. Employing fracking to extract profitable hydrocarbons is a net profit, but drilling and fracking for hot water is a much harder business case. Enhanced geothermal today often tries to extract lithium etc to create another revenue stream. Remember: geothermal electricity competes with electricity produced more cheaply by solar, hydro, or wind. Price is often (not always) the deciding factor.
Solar and wind can never compete as base production, they compete in fluctuating production. Hydro is only one of these that you can actually controll as long as you have water.
Cost is important, but when attempting to be fully renewable you need to try to get as much constant stable power as possible
@@lauriviik But they do compete already because they're feeding into the big leveling grid. The concept of caseload is now being reshaped. When utilities put out bids for generation it is now almost always for "solar + battery" - and it still comes out cheaper than oil & gas.
Checking out your ad. I loved my water bed in hot and cold weather, but it was unmovable. Thanks for showing this product.
Ricky congrats! Ive been following you since the beginning. You really stepped up your game and your reports are top notch. Unique, in depth and interesting. Talking about geothermal I witnesed two stages of project Miravalle in Costa Rica atnthenslopes of a vulcano. The problem was the minerals that deposited quickly on the pipes clogging the system
That's what I've been saying from the start since someone proposed using saltwater as the working fluid.
Make a closed system and circulate your working fluid.
They should combine this with a gravity battery using stored water. This would eliminate the need for any other power production and they need water storage as it is.
Thanks for the video, this is a great project. But reliance upon a large, centralized grid causes all the "peaking" problems. If every conceivable rooftop had solar panels and all those buildings had batteries suitable for their own peak needs, the grid would only be backup. A decentralized grid and storage system would also be strategically much more durable, making this a national defense priority that is being ignored at our peril.
Sure. On a Star Trek episode. I personally don’t have enough property to satisfy all my energy requirements, plus I still need a patch to let my dogs out. Not sure I want to purchase, install, maintain, and upgrade my ‘strategically durable’ solar contraption when I can just flip a switch and use power from a grid that has been 99.999999% reliable and available.
Sorry for being cynical, but these pie in the sky ideas spewed with little awareness of regional, state, and national scope realities, along with financial ramifications, actual economic benefits, what additional bureaucracies will the DOE create to manage this distributed nightmare, and of who or what is going to pay for ANOTHER redundant power grid? I’m not certain how it makes sense to fund and build a brand new supplement to something that mainly works well? Why not invest in buttressing the grid we have? Why not look at instead investing the $tens of billions into something practical, proven, better, and ultimately required when the anti nuke activists die off, hostile bureaucrats from regulatory agencies retire (and/or die off), and a pro nuclear political and social will take over because eventually fossil fuels will become too expensive and solar and wind still won’t make economic or technical sense as a primary energy source?
Whatever, sorry - now I’m just rambling.
@@ronjon7942The grid around here does not work well any more. It fails often and then burns a few towns and millions of trees. Plus, there have been many recent terrorist attack on grid infrastructure. A decentralized power grid is a huge strategic gain. Even something like a huge solar storm could not black out large areas if the grid and storage was decentralized. Rooftop solar and lithium storage batteries are commonplace and work well. No science fiction here, just clean reliable power that can't be knocked out nearly as easily as a large centralized grid.
Not everyone will be able to purchase and maintain their own level of energy independence. I picture a future where those that can provide some "or most" of their own energy needs will do so while also "assisting" the grid with residual energy after the home batteries are "topped off". The main grid will store that residual energy to help offset non-green sources. During the times when residential "suppliers" become "consumers" the main grid will function as normal. This ticks most boxes, a level of energy independence for those that "want 'it, increased green energy for those that "can't afford" or "don't want" it installed on their homes, and the grid isn't under a constant level of strain to produce and distribute.
@@garysanchezphotography I edited my post "No" should have been "Not".
AGW is a load of it.
Decarbonization is 21st century pyramid building.
Just burn coal.
Nice to have a company willing to risk $10 million in case something works.
Ricki, some of the information on fracking is out of date. The fracking industries have either stopped using the most toxic chemicals or rapidly moving away from them. In addition, water use is no longer a major concern since they now use brackish ground water using extracted from the area. Turns out one of the major additives used in traditional fracking is salt. By using this brackish ground water, they don't have to use fresh water with all of it's complications such as algae and other organic contamination they can inject the used brackish water back where it came from.
It's a good point. But is that for the oil&gas industry or for enhanced geothermal? I'm pretty sure you won't be able to use saltwater for energy production in the turbines.
@@ipp_tutor The water going through the turbine is on its own closed loop.
@@ipp_tutornuclear plants near the sea exchange heat with ocean without contaminating the turbine water. That stuff has to be insanely pristine. Measured down to the parts per billion to verify it's pure.
false.. that applies to only here... not beyond borders.. 😮
@@dertythegrower The mechanical and chemical description of this fracking process sound simpler and cheaper than the original process. This means you don't need regulations to enforce it's use, just someone who understand more money more better. Is there some other additional difficulty that arises?
Sounds like a good way to get rid of unwanted ocean water
Great content! Thanks. I didn’t know about this. The irony is how evil Google has behaved.
NOT clickbait I agree. VERY interesting subject that I hope expands all over the USA!!!!
Awesome job. Amazing research especially on what makes this power plant different (and better) than other gethermal/enhanced geothermal projects. Thank you for your hard work!
17 million gallons a year from lake Mead or Colorado river? Recycled?
While I'm a fan of residential geothermal, the need for industrial geothermal plants to use deep fracking processes is an absolute no-go in my mind. Living in Oklahoma where fracking became a major method of extraction for a while before being severely limited, we experienced house-damaging earthquakes and shaking weekly. The weekly shifting of the ground rocked the framing back and forth loosening the nails, created leaks in roofs by creating gaps in roof decking and drove wildlife to run from the shaking right across freeways. Oklahoma oil producers reaped the energy, while we paid for the repairs and foundation issues to our homes. So, I would recommend Google keep looking for other ways to be 100% carbon neutral. If anyone can do it, they can!
I'm excited to see Geothermal used more. It makes a lot of sense.
It would be cool if Google was able to find a use for the waste heat from their servers as well.
Thanks for this story!
Google does put use to their waste heat. For many datacenters, they use that heat for things like swimming pools, various farming practices, wood pellet production, or just simply a building heat source in winter. Personally, I think it'd be a good idea to purify sea water, since that's normally a very energy-intensive process.
I imagine Google could probably use heat pumps to concentrate the heat for applications that require a higher heat output. They could even make a steam turbine but I'm sure the energy they gain from that wouldn't make up for the cost of building it.
So true! Imagine edge computing centers combined with heat pumps for residential or commercial heating. It makes so much sense!
That's a good point,@@Toastmaster_5000. Geothermal desalination is definitely a thing. If we could only figure out how to couple energy production and desalination, we could get a consistent supply of freshwater for the system from seawater
Google has the privilege to spend money wildly because of the monetization of the search engine has created a stupid amount of wealth. Don’t assume that they are more virtuous than other companies, just so rich they can spend in extremely risky ventures.
Danger. It's not an infinite source. It cools the earth's core, which at some point stops spinning and the protective atmosphere gets stripped away like Mars.
Can use 1 large pipe with internal pipe for hot water up and external for cold water down!
Thanks for another great article Ricky
Please check out the company Eavor and their eavor-loop geothermal system. They have developed a closed system much like an underground radiator which has little or no fluid loss to the rock also they claim far lower circulation energy as the system is partially powered by thermal cycle
I would love to see your evaluation of their process
That's a great idea! I like the concept behind the eaverloop. However, that system is quite limited in terms of heat extraction rates compared to EGS, unless you literally drill a radiator with multiple loops and coils.
Eavor loop is running a city in Germany starting this year .Home heating and electricity . Hot baby!@@ipp_tutorThey are drilling in New Mexico as well. Geothermal can work anywhere on earth! Its a game changer! Geretsreid Germany
So I know heated waters from the mantle have dissolved metals and silica and that is the mechanism for most geological concentrations of resources we mine(which a billion exceptions) does anyone else here have a feeling there's a way to exploit that while also harvesting geothermal energy? So the metals and other minerals drop out of solution/solidify when pressure and temperature drop, so I'm curious if there's a way to incorporate a way to harvest the minerals in an economic way. Im curious if it will negatively effect the water table. Im curious if being near an ocean or sea and creating infrastructure to feed sea water rather then drinking water to the depths we'd want instead of drinking water. The risk of steam explosions or unforeseen geological events is a possibility I imagine.
great video
I think geothermal is a great concept. In the state of NV extra water is not available. When looking for the location of Project Red I also found another plant is being constructed in Southwestern UT. Another state that is experiencing water shortages in the Southern part of the state. Probably a concern that is not a big concern.
Thanks, this is fascinating!
And keep the beard growing. I have long believed that most men shave the wrong part of their heads!
LOL love this comment
I don't think they are the first - EAVOR Canada has been doing just that for a couple of years now. They even have contracts in Europe.
Geretstreid Germany broke ground in 2022. Game changer!
Why use an open system instead of a closed one, no infiltrations of water into the ground (with unknown result)?
I instantly drew the same conclusion about geothermal fracking. It's what is done to the water supply that is the major problem, that is specifically due to toxic chemicals that apply only to fossil fuel extraction, so unless they are injecting the same or other toxic chemicals into the ground for geothermal purposes that I am unaware of, the biggest fracking concern doesn't apply.
The geologic stability concern still applies, and that still needs to be talked about. One might expect that to be a deal breaker in California, a state that already has a problem with geologic instability, but on the other hand, the existing potential for earthquakes also means that California is perhaps the best place to accept this risk because their infrastructure is already engineered to accommodate it.
The last issue, as you mentioned, is water usage, and in some places that is a huge concern now, and will likely be a big concern in more places in the future. Considering the long-standing and worsening water supply problem over much of the US southwest, that seems like it might make the idea a nonstarter where many of Alphabet's operations are based, unless they can figure out a way to offset their water consumption. This would effectively convert Google's conservation problem from carbon zero to water zero.
Fascinating video! Thanks for posting it!
Water recycling, using preheated water from the server farm cooling, closed system. it should work with less water.
Google needs to call Tesla for some large XL Battery Storage setups to combine with their solar and wind
And use his Boring Company to drill the water wells, too?
WAY different scale of boring. @@chrisschembari2486
Imagine if liquid thermomagnets were used for Direct Energy Capture for the heat... maybe more innovation is needed....
Hydro fracking is also used in low production water wells, to open up the granite cracks so that the water can flow more efficiently/freely from the aquifer.
Great insight! However, I like the fact that Ricky clears this up so thoroughly because lots of people have misconceptions about it.
Not the same tech or substances at all...
@@ipp_tutorno.. you do, ironically.. and i used to help run a fracking sand truck company
@@dertythegrower Of course, they're not the same substances. That's precisely my point, and it's why I say people have a misconception about fracking being used in the context of ESG, thinking it's the same as in the oil industry.
But whatever gives you the right of way to showcase your experience...
I heavily doubt Google could even define "evil".
I really like your deep dive into the tradeoffs.
I think that putting water underground is not as much as a problem at it seems. It you pair the geothermal plant with aquifer drains like into agriculture, then you could get out that excess water that is going elsewhere.
You could even, I don't know, drill a bigger injection well, (twice the size) and a second extraction well down in order to get more of the water in percentage. Something like that.
I work for Mercury Energy in NZ. We have a few Geothermal plants, but it's not my focus as mine is Hydro. You (Google) have glossed over far too many issues. Continue your research, please. There won't be many (if any) new hydro plants and for good reason. For even better reasons, there should not be many new geothermal investments.
If I remember correctly, it's largely the waste water disposal from fracking that has been linked to earthquakes. The USGS reported that more waste water was put into the wells then when fracking was in progress, which they believe is the big reason for increased earthquakes.
TLDR, no waste water=far, far fewer quakes.
Where's all the water going to come from? And where is it going to? 17 MILLION litres a year? Sheesh!
That is a small amount of water.
Literally ground breaking tech.. Lol
Where the WATER comes from in the desert?
The water use by the pilot plant isn't that great in the scheme of things if its located on a large lot let say tens of acres then 17 million gallons could be collected during a good rain storm if the drainage is managed properly. The biggest challenge is constructing a cistern that would hold that much water.
Great point! Most problems can be engineered as long as we think ahead of time
My heatpump in Ottawa, Canada, has a vertical well. It was not cost prohibative. I am not rich.
I love your channel however your rant on fracking is ill informed and not true. I've worked in energy for 12 years now mostly in exploration and completion, I am a pipe welder. I would like to invite you at anytime for a tour of any fracking site I work on and show you how safe and amazing it is. Thanks
"Drilling, Fracking, and Completion": An Unexpected Adventure
Sounds like battery storage is the better way to go.
Digging tons of minerals for one battery with a diesel digger?
Thanks for sharing your videos and updates on various technologies. Always been a big fan of geothermal energy. Last I heard test sights were being shutdown because of their ability to make earth quakes. This was long before fracking was even on the radar. Curious that that is still an issue over 30 years later. They really need to stop trying to make a short cut to getting the heat out of the ground from above. IE they need to put boots on the ground where they are needed even if it’s under ground in high temperature dry rock. They need to develop a functional closed loop system for energy production.
Future video idea, possibly make a video about the efforts that Eric Sorensen has put into saving thorium liquid salt reactors from the dust bin of the past. Also the various benefits that they could provide. He has several vary long and dry informative videos that are very hard to watch but chocked full of details that are easy to overlook with each one individually being a game changer. Basically make a summary of his videos simplified and highlighted to show the how, why’s, and benefits simplified to open them up to the general public. Having had over 30 years in the power industry it took me several views of each of his long format videos to pick out as many benefits as I did and almost every one would be a game changer if it could be transferred to our current fleet of steam powered generators independent of prime mover.
One of the biggest advantages was the ability of the reactor to be self regulated due to the science behind its design. It only makes more energy when you withdraw more energy. Stop taking power out it idles itself back to a steady state standby. As a power system operator that one is amazing. The fact that it is self controlled is probably the scariest part of its design. There are very few control inputs because they simply are unnecessary and would likely mess it up thru operator input. It’s truly a walk away safe design.
I'm so happy I made productive decisions about my finances that changed my life forever,hoping to retire next year.. Investment should always be on any creative man's heart for success in life
That's awesome!!! I know nothing about investment and I'm keen on getting started. What are the strategies?
The first step in every successful investment is to establish your goals and risk tolerance, a task best undertaken with the assistance of a financial advisor with extensive financial market knowledge like Fergus Waylen
Wow. I'm a bit perplexed seeing him been mentioned here also Didn't know he has been good to so many people too this is wonderful, i'm in my fifth trade with him and it has been super
YES!!! That's exactly his name (Fergus Waylen) so many people have recommended highly about him and am just starting with him from Brisbane Australia
I don't want to put a figure to how much i've made doing that but let's just say it's more than enough to make trading worthwhile. And when i say worthwhile, i mean it.
Still doesn’t change the rather obvious point that fracking hugely increases the risk of earthquakes.
Very small tremors not full blown earthquakes
Try sleeping....@@andrewday3206
Ya, that’s a generous use of the word ‘hugely.’ It’s not like Yellowstone’s gonna crack open and cause the world-ending super volcano.
About time! This only gets better from here.
I haven’t read through the comments. Has there been a discussion about where all that water comes from?
💧🧂
To stop the water from escaping, they could pour in several gallons of radiator stop leak.
Google saying "don't be evil" is a real treat
" Don't be evil!" That's funny,Google said that
I was thinking and maybe Google is successful in this project and even develops it further for the world. Right after I thought about this the term UMBRELLA CORPORATION popped into my head.
Tim Latimer is my cousin and I couldn't be prouder for what he has done for renewables and the fight against climate change.
Another difference with the fracking is that they're only doing it once to set up the infrastructure, as opposed to the gas industry where they need to constantly frack new passageways to get more oil.
I like the idea of geothermal but my moneys still on nuclear
Our school district installed a 180-well closed loop geothermal system for heating one of our high school buildings. The system worked well for a couple of years until they noticed that the Delta-T was decreasing. Each year the water temp coming from the field was getting nearer to the return temp to the field. Seems the field could not recover fast enough to keep the water hot. They tried to return the heat by running the AC all summer to pump heat back into the field but this didn't well and was costly. They finally had to install natural gas boilers to help on the colder parts of winter. Not certain that they ever saved money or were able to keep their LEED ratings.
Thanks for this episode, makes me happy that I brought google at IPO and am holding long. Stock doing well and will do even better with innovations like this going forward.
That bed sounds like an accidental death playground.
I've been rooting for (and unsuccessfully trying to both contribute to and invest in) geothermal power for many years. I've had many of the same questions you did. Thank you for doing all that research! It's very helpful.
1:54 nice night skyline of London
Not surprising. Microsoft is looking to do the same.
Hopefully they back eavor
Excellent video, thanks for digging deep.
The last I heard (some years ago), The Geysers in California was no longer producing 900 MW. Because of excessive extraction and lower water levels, the output had dropped to 500-600 MW.