Friday, April 24, 2009

Oregon's Power Potential (5/8) Geothermal

Geothermal “the forgotten renewable”
Instead of burning fossil fuels to generate steam to turn a turbine, geothermal taps into the Earth’s natural heat to create energy.

Geothermal has the advantage of being a steady source. It is not intermittent like wind and solar. Roughly two-thirds of the initial costs comes from drilling. However, once built, it has no fuel costs.

With backing from google.org's "RE less than C" project research in geothermal has advanced. Now it is possible to extract power from lower temp wells than it was previously. That makes geothermal viable in more areas.

Looking at the geothermal map above, you can see that most of Oregon east of the Cascades is a prime candidate for geothermal.

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