I found recently the existence of Geothermic Energy and i didn’t really understand It.
There are zones where the underground is so hot we can get energy (Electricity) from it. How?
I read that One of the first to do It was in Italy, in the 1904 or something, and i don’t understand how could they build something without…well die. If the heat is so High wouldnt people be hurt? How could they build something like that? I guess that now is more easy but at that time how was that even possible?
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Outside of solar, wind and hydroelectric (which combined are only about 15% of power generation), pretty much all the electricity we generate in the entire world is done by boiling water into steam and using that steam to spin a turbine. What we use to heat the water varies from coal to natural gas or diesel fuel, or nuclear.
Geothermal energy is just another way to heat the water. If you’re in an area where it’s really hot underground due to volcanic activity, you can pump the water down there, let the earth warm it up, then pump it back up and use it for the same water-boiling-turbine-spinning process.
It doesn’t have to be brought all the way up to boiling, just made significantly hotter. Normally, if the water starts at 20 degrees you have to use a lot of coal/gas/whatever to heat it all the way up to 100 degrees to boil it. Maybe you can use geothermal energy first to bring it up to 80 or 85 degrees, now you’re starting with much warmer water so it takes much less coal to heat it up the rest of the way to 100.
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