Another Casualty of Typhoon Haiyan: Geothermal Power 78
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."
Shame, but at least they didn't melt down (Score:5, Insightful)
Such a shame, hopefully they plants can be repaired quickly. And hay, apparently they are much safer than the alternatives.
Renewable Doesn't Mean Invincible (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
It'll probably be fixed... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Geothermal power (Score:5, Insightful)
I dunno, it occurs to me that this leads us to a dark place, where any creation of energy is condemned because it has some effect on the environment, without any appreciation of scale. (In this case, the (paltry, in comparison) geothermal energy actually in use by the plant vs the several orders of magnitude higher thermal energy contained within the earth's core.)
It reminds me of a conversation I had several years ago with a Green, regarding fusion power, where I described taking sea water, separating out the deuterium for fuel, heating the water to drive turbines for power, and using a portion of that power to continue the process. (This is probably impractical for several reasons, but it was what I knew at the time and served "for sake of argument".) Her reaction was indignation that I would mine sea water for an isotope and dare to heat water to drive turbines, both of which clearly had an impact on the environment. At that point I realized there would be no solution that would be considered acceptable, and avoided the topic in the future. This was also when I came to realize that regular people often have no sense of scale.
Electricity reliability in Leyte is rubbish (Score:4, Insightful)
"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