Saskatchewan driller hits 'gusher' with ground-breaking geothermal well that offers h

[chuckChuck]

Both make sense when part of a smart grid and used strategically.

Canada has a tremendous hydro resources but many provinces are not using surplus hydro from Quebec, Manitoba and BC. Instead our grids are designed to export surplus hydro electricity to the US instead of other provinces.

Geo thermal may prove to be a great option but that should not stop us from putting lots of solar and wind capacity where it makes sense.

Even fossil fuel plants don't run all the time and are shut down for maintenance and rebuilding and sometimes equipment failure.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

When conventional (reliable) generation plants are shut down for maintenance, upgrades etc. They have to schedule that work months to years in advance, so the regulator can plan accordingly. Only 2 generation sources can shut down with zero notice. Yet be paid the same, as if each has the same value to a grid which is expected to have 100% uptime.

When solar and wind have a non zero number in the DCR - Dispatched (and Accepted) Contingency Reserve column and are doing so at prices that are still competitive with sources which are required to have a non zero amount of DCR, then we can compare apples to apples.

[chuckChuck]

Sask power must have this figured out. They are adding significant wind and backing up with more Manitoba hydro and new gas plants. And our farm rates are still probably going to be cheaper than Alberta's privatized system.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

Brooks solar farm is a 15 megawatt facility that cost $30 million to build. This geothermal project is a 20 megawatt facility with a projected total cost of $51 million dollars. One uses hardware built in China, the other uses hardware and technology built primarily in Canada. One produces intermittent power that requires a second generation source to produce power 24 hrs a day, the other produces electricity 24 hrs a day all on its own. Which one makes more sense?

Except it is much worse than the numbers indicate.
From the NEB:

National Energy Board has calculated capacity for areas where Alberta has potential utility-scale solar and indicates the capacity factors range from 13% in Collin Lake to 18% at Peigan Timber.

Using the average of that would make Brooks a 2.325 MW facility by output, rather than nameplate, up to $13 million per MW capacity.
Assume 90% uptime on the geothermal, would be $2.8 million per MW capacity.
Not clear if the output of the geothermal is net, including energy required for pumping etc?

[bucket]

Even fossil fuel plants don't run all the time and are shut down for maintenance and rebuilding and sometimes equipment failure

When those plants are built ..they typically have standby equipment that is available in case of castrophic failures...

They do condition monitoring so they can take a piece offline....fix it...while using the standby equipment...

[Jay-mo]

So this thing can theoretically when complete, generate 3MW? The smallest hydro dam in Manitoba is 10MW, it was built in the 1950's.
Maybe this is just a pilot project that can be dramatically scaled up if successful?
I know the latest hydro projects in Manitoba are insanely expensive but the scale of production is real.
Does Saskatchewan not have river systems in the north that could be utilized for Hydro generation?
3MW is in the realm of backup diesel powered generators.

[Jay-mo]

Geothermal cannot even be compared with wind or solar. It produces useful energy.
One word, dispatchable. Geothermal is in the same league as coal, gas, nuclear, hydro.
It can produce useful reliable dispatchable energy(electricity in this case) which a modern industrialized society requires ( and expects) to function, with no deleterious ( or expensive) effects on the reliability of the grid.

If it can be done at a cost that compares to the other dispatchable electricity generation sources is not as certain. But what can be certain, is that the generation cost that it is sold to the grid for, is the entire cost, unlike the unreliable sources which cause a cascade of higher costs all the way to the end consumer, regardless of any uninformed and ignorant claims of being cheapest.

The energy potential is massive, and it exists virtually anywhere, the environmental footprint (and above ground footprint) is insignificant, the required technology is all existing off the shelf type stuff ( and much of it home grown, and mature enough to be very cost effective), the sustainability is not in doubt, just the full life cycle EROEI that needs to be proven.

The shallow residential type geothermal systems which were becoming popular back when nat gas was expensive, and electrity was affordable, nearly all got turned off when gas got cheap, and electricity became artificially high. It took more dollars worth of energy to pump the fluid than came out the other end. On paper, these deep systems have a much higher EROEI, but there is also the issue that the temperature gradient declines over time. Time will tell. I'm optimistic.

I've been interested in geo-thermal systems since they started to become popular. However, almost everyone I know that has one says they are very expensive. They are expensive to install and expensive to maintain. Breakdowns usually cost in the 1000's not hundreds. This is residential.

[WiltonRanch]

I’m too lazy to do research so how do you generate electricity from a hot well? I understand residential geothermal systems and their shortcomings but this is a game changer if it comes to fruition.