Posts by Denis Pombriant

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Change and the New Energy Paradigm

September 26, 2017 by Denis Pombriant

One of the hardest parts of change is, well, change. That’s not circular reasoning either, changing something about your life takes a bit if courage because you might be encountering something you haven’t before. Change also requires an amount of trust that things have been thought through and we’ll all...

Hydrothermal Heat Mining

September 26, 2017 by Denis Pombriant

There are two general ways to mine heat—hydrothermal heat mining and Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS). For simplicity let’s look at hydrothermal heat mining here and EGS in a separate post. Hydrothermal heat mining’s modern uses for electricity generation from go back at least 100 years on every continent. Also, people...

How Much Fossil Fuel is Left?

September 26, 2017 by Denis Pombriant

Nothing on Earth is available in an infinite supply; not oxygen, not gold, not fossil fuels. Nothing, and that’s especially true of the fossil fuels that we use for energy. Interestingly those fuels are also a great source of carbon compounds that serve as the starting materials for all sorts...

Heat mining and power production

September 26, 2017 by Denis Pombriant

One power-generating solution that is both non-intermittent and nonpolluting involves mining (or extracting) heat from the Earth’s crust to generate electricity. According to “The Future of Geothermal Energy—Impact of Enhanced Geothermal Systems on the United States in the 21st Century,” a 2006 study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)...

Engineered Geothermal Systems

September 26, 2017 by Denis Pombriant

Conventional hydrothermal-heat mining relies on three major characteristics. Hydrothermal wells must be hot and their high heat gradients must be within the reach of conventional drilling technology; their rock formations must be porous enough to enable good flow of liquid water through the rock to absorb heat; and they must...

Baseload Power

September 26, 2017 by Denis Pombriant

Before we can think about changing the energy paradigm we need to take stock of what it does. Energy companies don’t need to do this, they’re very knowledgeable. But regular consumers may need some background. Let’s start with baseload power. Simply put, baseload power is the minimum demand of a...

A test case for heat mining

September 26, 2017 by Denis Pombriant

There’s a compelling opportunity presenting itself in Arizona for a low-cost test case for EGS or using heat from the Earth’s crust to generate electricity in a conventional electric plant. The Navajo Generating Station, in Page, Arizona is the West’s largest coal-fired power plant and it is also tailor-made for...

Supply and demand

September 26, 2017 by Denis Pombriant

What happens when the supply of any product continues to dwindle is predictable? First prices rise because of simple supply and demand economics. If demand is not that elastic as is the case for energy, consumers will have to find ways to pay the price. Even when supplies dwindle and...

The carbon cycle

September 26, 2017 by Denis Pombriant

Every living thing is dependent upon green plants for sustenance. Whether you’re a vegetarian, a herbivore, or a carnivore if you look back far enough in your food chain, what you eat comes from plants. Even fungi that breakdown once living things in the process of decay, earn a living...

eROeI–energy accounting 101

September 26, 2017 by Denis Pombriant

In business there’s a concept called return on investment (ROI), and it’s pretty simple. When ROI is a positive number you can make a profit, when it’s negative, you lose money. If you invest $10, say in marketing, to sell a $1,000 product, your ROI on the marketing program is...