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Lord Kelvin invented the heat pump in , and Heinrich Zoelly had patented the idea of using it to draw heat from the ground in The earliest one was probably Robert C. Donald Kroeker designed the first commercial geothermal heat pump to heat the Commonwealth Building Portland, Oregon and demonstrated it in In , Pacific Gas and Electric began operation of the first successful geothermal electric power plant in the United States at The Geysers in California.

The International Geothermal Association IGA has reported that 10, megawatts MW of geothermal power in 24 countries is online, which was expected to generate 67, GWh of electricity in IGA projects growth to 18, MW by , due to the projects presently under consideration, often in areas previously assumed to have little exploitable resources. In , the United States led the world in geothermal electricity production with 3, MW of installed capacity from 77 power plants. Indonesia's 28, MW are the largest geothermal reserves in the world, and it is predicted to overtake the USA in the next decade.

Geothermal electric plants were traditionally built exclusively on the edges of tectonic plates where high temperature geothermal resources are available near the surface.

The development of binary cycle power plants and improvements in drilling and extraction technology enable enhanced geothermal systems over a much greater geographical range. Other demonstration projects are under construction in Australia , the United Kingdom , and the United States of America.

The laws of thermodynamics limits the efficiency of heat engines in extracting useful energy. Exhaust heat is wasted, unless it can be used directly and locally, for example in greenhouses, timber mills, and district heating. System efficiency does not materially affect operational costs as it would for plants that use fuel, but it does affect return on the capital used to build the plant. In order to produce more energy than the pumps consume, electricity generation requires relatively hot fields and specialized heat cycles.

Geothermal energy comes in either vapor-dominated or liquid-dominated forms. Larderello and The Geysers are vapor-dominated. Flash plants are the common way to generate electricity from these sources.

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Pumps are generally not required, powered instead when the water turns to steam. Most wells generate MWe. They are common in extensional terrains, where heating takes place via deep circulation along faults, such as in the Western US and Turkey. Water passes through a heat exchanger in a Rankine cycle binary plant.

The water vaporizes an organic working fluid that drives a turbine. These binary plants originated in the Soviet Union in the late s and predominate in new US plants. Binary plants have no emissions. Lower temperature sources produce the energy equivalent of M BBL per year.

More than half went for space heating, and another third for heated pools. The remainder supported industrial and agricultural applications. Heat for these purposes may also be extracted from co-generation at a geothermal electrical plant. Heating is cost-effective at many more sites than electricity generation.

At natural hot springs or geysers , water can be piped directly into radiators. In hot, dry ground, earth tubes or downhole heat exchangers can collect the heat. However, even in areas where the ground is colder than room temperature, heat can often be extracted with a geothermal heat pump more cost-effectively and cleanly than by conventional furnaces. They frequently combine functions, including air conditioning , seasonal thermal energy storage , solar energy collection, and electric heating.

Heat pumps can be used for space heating essentially anywhere. Iceland is the world leader in direct applications. Enhanced geothermal systems EGS actively inject water into wells to be heated and pumped back out.

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The water is injected under high pressure to expand existing rock fissures to enable the water to freely flow in and out. The technique was adapted from oil and gas extraction techniques. However, the geologic formations are deeper and no toxic chemicals are used, reducing the possibility of environmental damage. Drillers can employ directional drilling to expand the size of the reservoir. Geothermal power requires no fuel except for pumps , and is therefore immune to fuel cost fluctuations. However, capital costs are significant. Drilling accounts for over half the costs, and exploration of deep resources entails significant risks.

A typical well doublet extraction and injection wells in Nevada can support 4. District heating systems may benefit from economies of scale if demand is geographically dense, as in cities and greenhouses, but otherwise piping installation dominates capital costs. Some governments subsidize geothermal projects. Geothermal power is highly scalable: Geothermal projects have several stages of development.

Each phase has associated risks. At the early stages of reconnaissance and geophysical surveys, many projects are cancelled, making that phase unsuitable for traditional lending. Projects moving forward from the identification, exploration and exploratory drilling often trade equity for financing. The Earth's internal thermal energy flows to the surface by conduction at a rate of The conductive heat flux averages 0. These values are much higher near tectonic plate boundaries where the crust is thinner. They may be further augmented by fluid circulation, either through magma conduits , hot springs , hydrothermal circulation or a combination of these.

A geothermal heat pump can extract enough heat from shallow ground anywhere in the world to provide home heating, but industrial applications need the higher temperatures of deep resources. The most demanding applications receive the greatest benefit from a high natural heat flux, ideally from using a hot spring. The next best option is to drill a well into a hot aquifer.

If no adequate aquifer is available, an artificial one may be built by injecting water to hydraulically fracture the bedrock. This last approach is called hot dry rock geothermal energy in Europe, or enhanced geothermal systems in North America. Much greater potential may be available from this approach than from conventional tapping of natural aquifers. Estimates of the potential for electricity generation from geothermal energy vary sixfold, from.

Myanmar Engineering Society has identified at least 39 locations in Myanmar capable of geothermal power production and some of these hydrothermal reservoirs lie quite close to Yangon which is a significant underutilized resource. This increase came from seven geothermal projects that began production in GEA also revised its estimate of installed capacity upward by MW, bringing current installed U. Geothermal power is considered to be renewable because any projected heat extraction is small compared to the Earth's heat content.

Human extraction taps a minute fraction of the natural outflow, often without accelerating it. By using geothermal sources of energy present generations of humans will not endanger the capability of future generations to use their own resources to the same amount that those energy sources are presently used.

Even though geothermal power is globally sustainable, extraction must still be monitored to avoid local depletion. The three oldest sites, at Larderello , Wairakei , and the Geysers have experienced reduced output because of local depletion. Heat and water, in uncertain proportions, were extracted faster than they were replenished. If production is reduced and water is reinjected, these wells could theoretically recover their full potential.

Such mitigation strategies have already been implemented at some sites. The long-term sustainability of geothermal energy has been demonstrated at the Lardarello field in Italy since , at the Wairakei field in New Zealand since , [52] and at The Geysers field in California since Falling electricity production may be boosted through drilling additional supply boreholes, as at Poihipi and Ohaaki.

The Wairakei power station has been running much longer, with its first unit commissioned in November , and it attained its peak generation of MW in , but already the supply of high-pressure steam was faltering, in being derated to intermediate pressure and the station managing MW. Around the start of the 21st century it was managing about MW, then in two 8MW isopentane systems were added, boosting the station's output by about 14MW. Detailed data are unavailable, being lost due to re-organisations.

These pollutants contribute to global warming , acid rain , and noxious smells if released. In addition to dissolved gases, hot water from geothermal sources may hold in solution trace amounts of toxic elements such as mercury , arsenic , boron , and antimony. The modern practice of injecting cooled geothermal fluids back into the Earth to stimulate production has the side benefit of reducing this environmental risk.

The potential energy in the reservoir height is then captured with low-head turbines. Devices can be either on shore or floating offshore. Floating devices will have environmental concerns about the mooring system affecting benthic organisms , organisms becoming entangled, or EMF effects produced from subsea cables. There is also some concern regarding low levels of turbine noise and wave energy removal affecting the nearfield habitat.

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Submerged pressure differential based converters are a comparatively newer technology [30] utilizing flexible usually reinforced rubber membranes to extract wave energy. These converters use the difference in pressure at different locations below a wave to produce a pressure difference within a closed power take-off fluid system. This pressure difference is usually used to produce flow, which drives a turbine and electrical generator. Submerged pressure differential converters frequently use flexible membranes as the working surface between the ocean and the power take-off system.

Their compliant nature also allows for large changes in the geometry of the working surface, which can be used to tune the response of the converter for specific wave conditions and to protect it from excessive loads in extreme conditions. A submerged converter may be positioned either on the sea floor or in midwater.

In both cases, the converter is protected from water impact loads which can occur at the free surface. Wave loads also diminish in non-linear proportion to the distance below the free surface. This means that by optimizing the depth of submergence for such a converter, a compromise between protection from extreme loads and access to wave energy can be found. Submerged WECs also have the potential to reduce the impact on marine amenity and navigation, as they are not at the surface. Common environmental concerns associated with marine energy developments include:.

The Tethys database provides access to scientific literature and general information on the potential environmental effects of wave energy. The worldwide resource of coastal wave energy has been estimated to be greater than 2 TW. The north and south temperate zones have the best sites for capturing wave power. The prevailing westerlies in these zones blow strongest in winter. There is a potential impact on the marine environment.

Noise pollution, for example, could have negative impact if not monitored, although the noise and visible impact of each design vary greatly. Of those 2, gigawatts, only about gigawatts can be captured with the current technology. Offshore deployments of WECs and underswater substation are being complicated procedures. SIAB discussed these deployments in terms of economy and time efficiency, as well as safety. Certain solutions are suggested for the various problems encountered during the deployments. It is found that the offshore deployment process can be optimized in terms of cost, time efficiency and safety.

A group of wave energy devices deployed in the same location is called wave farm , wave power farm or wave energy park. Wave farms represent a solution to achieve larger electricity production. The devices of a park are going to interact with each other hydrodynamically and electrically, according to the number of machines, the distance among them, the geometric layout, the wave climate, the local geometry, the control strategies.

The design process of a wave energy farm is a multi- optimization problem with the aim to get a high power production and low costs and power fluctuations.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Transport of energy by wind waves, and the capture of that energy to do useful work. This article is about transport and the capture of energy in ocean waves.

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For other aspects of waves in the ocean, see Wind wave. For other uses of wave or waves, see Wave disambiguation. Renewable energy portal Environment portal. Wave power in the United States. Handbook of coastal engineering. The dynamics of the upper ocean 2nd ed. Waves in ocean engineering 1st ed.

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United States Department of the Interior. Archived from the original PDF on July 11, Retrieved October 17, Matching Renewable Electricity Generation with Demand: Random Seas and Design of Maritime Structures. Waves in oceanic and coastal waters. Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society.

Reprinted as Appendix in: Theory of Sound 1 , MacMillan, 2nd revised edition, Water wave mechanics for engineers and scientists. Advanced Series on Ocean Engineering. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews. Journal of Offshore Mechanics and Arctic Engineering. Archived from the original on July 1, Waves, tides, and thermals — new research funding seeks to put them to work for us". Wald, New York Times , Retrieved 23 April Proceedings of the Royal Society of London A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences.

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