Geothermal energy can halve electricity costs – and replace power plants

According to a recent Stanford study, petrothermal geothermal systems combined with wind and solar power could not only cut electricity costs in half, but also replace baseload power plants.

Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) use the natural geothermal heat from deep layers to continuously produce electricity. Researchers at Stanford University show in the journal “Cell Reports Sustainability” that this technology can more than halve electricity costs compared to fossil fuels. EGS act as a reliable base load source and can reduce the need for wind and solar systems as well as battery storage.

Engineers use EGS (also called petrothermal geothermal energy) to tap heat at a depth of three to eight kilometers. First they carry out precise drilling into the deep rock. They then pump water into the borehole at high pressure. This targeted pressure breaks up the rock, creating artificial pathways for heat transport.

The water underground heats up due to natural geothermal heat. Pumps then bring it back to the surface. Power plants there use thermal energy directly to generate clean electricity. This technical efficiency enables space savings when expanding renewable energies.

Petrothermal geothermal energy could halve electricity costs

The study shows that an EGS share of just ten percent can reduce the need for onshore wind turbines by 15 percent. This addition would also reduce the required solar area by twelve percent. The technology can particularly significantly reduce the load on the network for battery storage, whose capacity requirements would be reduced by 28 percent.

In the countries examined, the total land use for energy production could fall from 0.57 to 0.48 percent. Particularly densely populated small states such as Singapore, Gibraltar, Taiwan and South Korea would benefit from this low space requirement.

In these regions, many people live in very small spaces, which makes it difficult to build large-scale wind farms or solar fields. EGS promise a solution because the power plants take up little space and generate energy directly from the depths. In this way, these regions could secure their supplies without having to sacrifice valuable land areas.

Secure energy supply without reserve power plants

Switching from fossil fuels to renewable systems can generally reduce electricity costs by around 60 percent. If the health and climate-related costs are also taken into account, total social expenditure falls by over 90 percent. A stable base load source such as EGS has little influence on the pure system costs.

The study proves that weather-dependent energy sources do not require expensive reserve power plants to ensure security of supply. According to the study, EGS have the potential to take over the current function of coal and nuclear power plants in the power grid. As a new baseload power plant, petrothermal geothermal energy would guarantee a secure supply around the clock.

The technology therefore offers a promising way to reduce global warming and air pollution relatively inexpensively.

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