[HN Gopher] Small German town starts testing geothermal power ut...
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Small German town starts testing geothermal power utilizing new
techniques
Author : PaulHoule
Score : 78 points
Date : 2025-03-04 15:35 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (apnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (apnews.com)
| kieranmaine wrote:
| Some extra information on cost:
|
| "According to Robert Winsloe, Eavor's executive vice-president of
| origination, the company expects its AGS technology to achieve an
| LCOE of $75/MWh by 2029-2030"
|
| https://www.eavor.com/blog/eavors-innovation-promises-signif...
| retromario wrote:
| Geretsried (the town) apparently sits in an ideal location for
| geothermal power and heat plants, in the same basin as Munich and
| other surrounding municipalities who have been leveraging
| geothermal energy to great effect.
|
| https://geothermie-allianz.de/en/geothermal-in-bavaria/
|
| I'm surprised we don't see more such projects.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Where it's feasible it might be cost. Perhaps it's still
| cheaper to pollute than to implement projects like this.
| lqet wrote:
| > I'm surprised we don't see more such projects.
|
| The main reason why geothermal drilling has a difficult stand
| in Germany is the case of Staufen:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staufen_im_Breisgau#Geothermal...
| barbazoo wrote:
| > The cause for this geological change has been identified as
| a drilling operation conducted in the summer and autumn of
| 2007 to provide geothermal heating to the city hall.
|
| That project was about transferring heat. Perhaps for
| geothermal electricity production which can happen away from
| population centres this is less of an issue?
| fifilura wrote:
| There is a huge difference between "Geothermal Energy"
| technologies.
|
| The project in Staufen seems to be about a heat pump, which
| is a really simple technology that can be used pretty much
| everywhere. The problem seems to be that the drilling hole
| hit a gypsum layer that started swelling. But this should
| be pretty easy to know if it is in an area at risk.
|
| Lots of houses here in Sweden has this technology, my house
| has, and it is a 2 day project to drill a 150m hole for a
| standalone house and install the heat pump, maybe $20-30k
| investment.
|
| Wikipedia claims Sweden is #2 in the world for geothermal
| energy, but it is because of these simple heat pumps.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_heating#Applicatio
| n...
|
| Heat pumps do not rely on hot water springs, it mainly just
| recycles old heat from the sun that has been stored in the
| ground over the season(s).
|
| The project in the article talks about hot spring
| geothermal energy, which is more complex because it
| requires drilling holes several kilometers deep.
| maxhille wrote:
| There is no "away from population centres" in central
| europe
| Archelaos wrote:
| For more details what already exists, there is a map of deep
| geothermal power plants in the "Energie-Atlas Bayern" (in
| German) published by the government of Bavaria:
|
| https://www.karten.energieatlas.bayern.de/start/?c=677751,54...
|
| The "Energie-Atlas Bayern" includes also maps of other kinds of
| geothermal installations.
|
| - A map of downhole heat exchangers:
|
| https://www.karten.energieatlas.bayern.de/start/?c=677751,54...
|
| - A map of groundwater heat pumps:
|
| https://www.karten.energieatlas.bayern.de/start/?c=677751,54...
| sockaddr wrote:
| If you like small german towns, new power plants, and time travel
| you should watch Dark
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_%28TV_series%29
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Map of Europe indicating where geothermal district heating
| resources are available: https://map.hugeo.hu/geo_DH/
|
| Manual:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20240619080217/http://geodh.eu/w...
| belorn wrote:
| It is an interesting test, but I wish they could provide a bit
| more details. Doing some searches it seems that this is a EUR350
| million project, for which EUR100 millions is direct grants given
| by the government, and the remaining are special loans given out
| by different green investment initiatives. It is planned to
| generate 8.2 MW of electrical output (in practice they intend to
| divert some for heating, which mean less total electrical output
| but with higher amount of usable energy).
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(page generated 2025-03-04 23:01 UTC)