what is geothermal energy?
Clean, Sustainable Energy for the benefit of Humanity and the Environment
Geothermal energy - heat from the earth - is an important energy source having environmental and economic advantages over fossil and nuclear energy sources. Electricity generated from geothermal steam supplies power without polluting our atmosphere or water, or creating radioactive waste. Clean heat from geothermal water dries vegetables, heats greenhouses, and warms clusters of homes and buildings in district heating systems. Geothermal heat pumps provide highly efficient heating, cooling, and hot water for homes and schools.
Only a small fraction of our available geothermal resources are being used today. Improvements in technology and widening recognition of geothermal energy's true value will lead to a greatly increased amount of this clean, reliable resource being developed in essentially all countries of the world. Geothermal energy is a vital part of a sustainable future.
Types of Geothermal Energy
A. Hydrothermal Systems
Hydrothermal aquifers exploit heat from the earths crust through naturally occurring ground waters or deep seated aquifers in highly porous & Permeable rocks. The exploitation of these aquifers as a source of energy requires a production borehole to the depth of the aquifer reservoir to extract the super heated water under very high pressure in its original or derivative form. An injection well is used to infuse the water back in to the earth system, so as to keep the entire hydrothermal system in equilibrium and prolong the natural live of the reservoir.
Hydrothermal systems are location and source dependent unlike their the Enhance / Engineered Geothermal Systems
B. Enhanced Geothermal Systems
Enhanced Geothermal System (EGS or Engineered Geothermal System (EGS) or Hot Dry Rock (HDR), or Hot Fractured Rock (HFR) are different acronyms used for technology developed to extract Earth's natural heat by artificial injection of cold water into crystalline plutonic rocks or metamorphic basement complexes. Water is pumped down one well to induce hydraulic fracturing to create a reservoir. Water is then circulated under pressure through these fractures, absorbing heat before returning to the surface via one or more production wells. This system derives its names from the fact that a Hydrothermal reservoir is artificially created. The power generation threshold from these systems has the ability to exceed the total present and future energy demands.
Being a artifically created system , most parameter can controlled and these systems are practically location independent and only varry in depth in different locations.
