Comments for North of the Hot Zone

Comment on Alta-Rock acquires exclusive geothermal rights to 263,000 acres in Western Washington by art eos

art eos — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 21:54:32 +0000

Note that the company is AltaRock Energy, not “Alta-Rock.”

Also, in an press release issued two weeks ago, the company says it closed $26.25 milion in private backing, including $6.25 million from Google, and $20 million from Khosla Ventures and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Advanced Technology Ventures, and Paul Allen’s Vulcan Capital.

(See http://www.altarockenergy.com/AltaRockEnergy.2008-08-19.pdf)

Comment on Update on Geothermal Washington by Konrad Roeder

Konrad Roeder — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 17:43:01 +0000

Politically, the next steps ought to be to ask for a Geothermal Task Group in the same way that the pro-nukes are pushing for a pair of bills Anderson, HB 2737 and Delvin SB 6568
to create the joint legislative task force on nuclear energy. Once created, such a task force can obtain funding for a more precise heat flow study of our geothermal resources. Perhaps we won’t need to make ourselves dependent on another imported fuel - uranium.

From a Geological Standpoint, although heatflow maps such as this one from the Idaho National Labs already exist, http://geothermal.inl.gov/maps/wa.pdf , the next step is to generate an accurate surface heatflow map of the Columbia Basin that can be used pinpoint the high-temperature geothermal resources. Temperature measurements need to be taken at intervals in shallow test wells to predict the heat flow down to 10,000 km, where the high-temperature geothermal resources are.

Comment on Blumenthal Article gets picked up nationally and on local blogs by art eos

art eos — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 18:56:03 +0000

This is no big surprise — Blumenthal writes for the McClatchy chain, which includes the Charlotte (North Carolina) Observer.

Comment on Geothermal Brown Bag a success by Jun

Jun — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 08:06:49 +0000

Congratulation. Overflowing attendance shows the great potential of geothermal.

Comment on Seattle Times Op/Ed by Lawrence Molloy

Lawrence Molloy — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 20:23:22 +0000

(author responds)
The Map was generated by the Seattle Times, it highlights eastern Washington as the land and lease holding rights are more accessible in those areas. The majority of thermal hot springs in Washington State are clustered along ridge lines within national parks or wilderness areas.

The majority of the lease enquiries by commercial and private real estate has been along or proximal to the Cascade crest. The concept goal here is to drill as close to the Volcano as possible.

As for the Eastern Washington resources these are mostly deep irrigation wells that have shown temperature gradients of interest (though shallow). Many of the Eastern Washington Resources would need significant core samples of depth to validate temperatures and flows.

Utlilities both public and private are looking at geothermal as part of their resource base. However the time is still 7-8 years before they anticipate geothermal coming on line. One question is the degree to which the utilities will engage developers and how.

Comment on Seattle Times Op/Ed by Gary

Gary — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 19:20:27 +0000

Who drew the outline of WA state hot spots for geothermal activitiy? How come it missed the hot springs at Sol Duc? Mount Baker (an active volcano last time I looked) Mt. Saint Helens?, Mt. Rainier? I see it at least it got Mt Adams..

While I’m all for keeping major power sources out of national parks, parks are consumers of electric power and having a small power plant to run the facilities would not be out of line.

Still it seems strange that Puget Power would be all hot and heavy for wind mills but not geothermal energy. Something must be up with the cost of extraction that this article is missing. (water table issues?) A private power company like Puget Power would want power at it’s cheapest with the least legal battles. Wind is being forced down their throats because water power is currently so cheap. GeoThermal would satisfy the same WA law so what’s wrong with it?