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Another Casualty of Typhoon Haiyan: Geothermal Power
necro81 writes "Little known even in environmental circles is a renewable energy success story: five geothermal power plants on Leyte Island in the Philippines — each of which produces enough power for the entire island — that collectively produce more than 10% of the Philippines' total electrical demand. From boreholes deep underground comes pressurized water heated to 280 Celsius. At the surface it flashes into steam, turning one set of turbines, then cools and contracts to spin a second set of turbines. The low-grade steam is then condensed back into water and reinjected into the bedrock. But Typhoon Haiyan destroyed the cooling towers, snapped transmission towers, and scattered the employees."
Such a shame, hopefully they plants can be repaired quickly. And hay, apparently they are much safer than the alternatives.
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Come on NYT! That not paradoxical; it's ironic.
Regardless, this is an odd way to frame the story. Such a storm would (and did) destroy other kinds of power plants. Geothermal power is not a casualty of the typhoon.
The Phillipines is poor enough that a storm like kills a lot of people, but it's getting richer fast. I'm not a geothermal engineer, but I'd assume a very expensive bit of building a geothermal plant is creating the boreholes in the first place, and then keeping them from collapsing. If the hole survived it should be much cheaper to repair then it was to build in the first place. IOf there was enough business to justify it then there's probably enough to justify rebuilding it at a lower price.
Hell, if they had a good insurance policy it won't cost them a dime. Their rates will skyrocket in the future, but at least they'll have their electricity back.
Sounds like the Super Haiyan was over 9000!!!!!!!!
To swiftboat almost any anything that Big Industry (in this case, Big Oil) considers a threat/nuisance. WTF do they think would have happened if an aging TEPCO reactor was in the same storm? I wouldn't like to be there and find out. How would a deepwater oil platform have fared?
I'm pretty much sick of what passes for "news" these days. It's all pretty much shameless puff pieces and hit jobs because that's what corporations pay for.
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And what's the difference between a geo-thermal plant being put out of service by a huge storm and a fossil-fuel plant being put out of service by a huge storm? The fossil-fuel plant would not have come through unscathed either. The story is pointless.
That's it, we've reached the tipping point. The environment is now attacking the environmentally friendly sites first feeding it ever increasing amounts of carbon and making it's stronger.
The scientists did warn us about a runaway chain reaction.
Maybe I'm paranoid, but isn't that tapping into a non-renewable resource - the heat of earth's core? Now, one could argue that the quantities used by these plants is utterly insignificant. The same could probably be said about an individual coal plant's contribution to global warming.
I don't like coal. Global warming? Meh who gives a fuck.
But living where alot of coal plants are in use... There's this fine fine black soot on everything.
They seem to crank the plants to 200% at night. And in the morning there's soot everywhere.
Whatever it is it even makes it thru high quality air filters and sticks to everything. Water won't wash it off either.
I don't give a fuck about the planet and global warming. Because really. I won't be alive long enough for us to even admit its a problem.
But i kinda do wonder how much of that black gunk is ending up in my lungs... And lungs.. I'm kinda using those.
"Massive country is deriving 10% of their electricity from geothermal"
Because if you ask random people, they may have heard of Iceland doing geothermal, and think it only works well there.
The carbon footprint of the human race would decrease if we just stopped giving AIDS drugs to all those faggots.
On the contrary, renewables like wind and solar are very fragile. Both on a local scale, and on the extensive grid that they require to deliver some semblance of reliable power. Any typhoon or hurricane will totally destroy wind or solar farms along with the grid, and leave a completely non-functional energy system.
Nuclear plants on the other hand are very robust against natural disaster, and allow for a highly distributed and reliable energy system. Along with small modular reactors there will be an ever decreasing dependance on a nation-wide grid.
"renewable energy success story" : ha! Power reliability has always been a significant problem in Leyte. All businesses in Tacloban CBD have backup generators which they fire up at least a couple of times a week, sometimes daily. The city is often accompanied by the hum of diesel generators.
I recall articles in National newspapers talking about constant power shortages across Visaya's region, with rolling blackouts where Northern Luzon region (where Manila is) has plenty of supply.
Maybe it is mostly a transmission problem, not a generation problem, but constant rolling blackouts suggests an enduring generation to me. Hardly a success story
The next typhoon might wipe out sensationalist headlines. Yeah I know, that'd be one heck of a storm. It takes a mighty wind to compete with what passes for journalism online. That storm might not be mighty enough to take out Congress though. Wheeeew, Nelly!
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Where "massive" means half the size of Pakistan or Nigeria. How about "Medium sized country built on volcanoes has 10% geothermal power"? I'm guessing you wouldn't care ffor "Geothermal useless for 90% of volcanic island's energy needs".
The headline to this story "Another Casualty of Typhoon Haiyan: Geothermal Power" implies that something about geothermal power made it extra vulnerable to damage from the typhoon but the only damage the geothermal plants suffered as the same kinds of damage any other electrical generating plant would suffer -- downed transmission lines, scattered employees and damage to the cooling towers that any steam generating plant requires. It's not a big point but the headline lead me to think there was something more to the story.