Your Questions About Geothermal Energy Pros And Cons

adminsta answers:

Http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=the+geysers+geothermal

1. Once in place, the energy tends to be pretty constant, and reliable.
2. It does not use up fossil fuel or release CO2 into the atmosphere.

1. It does tend to bring heavy metals into the environment, so some cleanup is required.
2. In the case of The Geysers the “Yellowstone of the west” geysers were all plugged up, and destroyed forever. (Their website says that there were no geysers, but that’s flat wrong. 40 years ago, there were older people living in the area that can remember hearing the geysers erupting on calm nights.)

Edit: interesting thumbs.
And it would seem there are not downsides to geothermal.
That being the case, maybe it would be good to plug up all the geysers in Yellowstone, and fence off the area so no-one could get in any more. That’s what happened in Geyserville, Ca. That’s not to say that i don’t appreciate the benefits of the power. However, i wouldn’t mind having a park that was a bit like Yellowstone within easy driving distance of San Francisco.

adminsta answers:

Pros – renewable, low maintenance costs
Cons – Not available everywhere, difficult to begin implementation

Learn more below:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_energy

adminsta answers:

Geothermal or ground source?

Geothermal is very limited. Not many hot springs around. In this country all the good geothermal areas are national parks.

Ground source is a great way to go. The cons are having a well rig drive all over your yard for a week and then having to pay them. The benefits are 50 dollar a month heating/cooling bills instead of 250 dollars a month. It is also more comfortable heat, it comes out of the registers around 100F and the air does not get as dry as gas and oil fired furnaces.

Only cons are price and finding a reputable guy to do it who is not going to over charge you for the ‘super efficency’. The efficency has all to do with the water in the ground being uses as a heat sink vs the outside air.

adminsta answers:

It depends on the type of installation you go for. If you want to add geothermal to an existing structure it is a lot harder than designing a home with geothermal from scratch.

One big con is if you try to tie the geothermal system into the public water system which some folks here in Texas tried. They ended up having the entire system disconnected.

Read the story here;
http://www.wfaa.com/home/Going-green-turns-into–78842992.html

adminsta answers:

Hot rock from volcanoes can be used to create steam.
They bring hot rock up towards the surface from hundreds of miles underground.
They contain a little too much energy sometimes.
Geothermal energy (lava or ash) can do a job on a house.
Iceland gets most of its energy from geothermal sources and is pretty much one big volcano.