Croatia starting geothermal power generating project!

[thewayne]

This is REALLY cool, or I should say, hot!

They've discovered an underground lake, 2.4 kilometers (about 1.5 miles) that has an average temperature of 142 degrees Celsius! Keep in mind that water boils at 100 degrees C at sea level. I'm guessing the plan is to drill down to it and capture the pressurized heat to drive turbines generating electricity at ground level.

Not free energy, but darn close! This will be a fantastically inexpensive power source for Croatia - they're expecting 16 megawatts of power production, enough to supply "tens of thousands of homes"! And obviously it's going to cost a lot of money to build the power plant and to interconnect the generating station to the grid.

https://thenextweb.com/news/croatia-geothermal-energy-plant

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/23/10/12/018250/croatia-wants-to-turn-superhot-underground-lake-into-a-16mw-geothermal-power-plant

Comments

[acelightning73]

Icceland does a lot with geothermal power. The hotel I stayed in in Reykjavik was entirely heated by geothermal. And all the hot water for the laundry was heated by the volcanos under Iceland. The towels and sheets were always nice and clean, and the shower never ran out of hot water. (I had a miserable time in Iceland. People are often hostile to tourists. And I had gone in order to see the Aurora Borealis, but the three days we were there were overcast and rainy. When we went home, ours was the last plane to land at JFK airport because that weather over Iceland had created a blizzard over the NY area. I had to find my car in long-term parking and drive back to New Jersey, through the city itself, in heavy snow. But I loved the way the used geothermal energy for a lot of things, And there's an undertonr of Norse lore to their culture. Theres a Church 0f Thor in eykjavik but IReykjavik, but I coulnd't find it - I couldn't ask for directions, because I don't speak Icelandic. It sounds as if they're all readibg "Beowulf' out loud.

[thewayne]

A Church of Thor would be a cool thing to see!  I have not yet seen the Northern Lights, nor the Southern: definitely something that I want to see.  That would be so nice to have unlimited hot water for showers, my dad installed always-on water heaters in his house in Phoenix, and had great water pressure, but I didn't like taking hugely long showers there.

[acelightning73]

I saw some photos of it on TV, and I wanted to see it in person. But I couldn't speak or read enough Icelandic to figure out how to get there. I did get a nice statue of Freya (for my Goddesses shrine) carved from volcanic basalt. And I got some interesting books (in English!) on Norse mythology and magic. There are no fast-food restaurants, or any place to get food, after dark, except you can get a microwaved single-serve pizza in the video-rental store.

There are radio and TV ads all over the place for "tankless water heaters" and "tankless boilers". They sound interesting, but I've heard rumors that they're not as great as they sound. (We rent this house anyway, so we're not replacing major items. Our ordinary water heater stopped working a few years after we moved in, and the landlord had his plumber buddy who went to Catholic school with him bring in a new big-tank kind of water heater. The other thing I'd like is split-cycle HVAC. I've had to turn off the heater and turn on the air conditioner four times this week. I had the split-cycle kind of AC in my hotel room in Australia, because in Melbourne you never know whether it's going to get cold or hot, or when. I found the device extremely useful.

The food was much better in Melbourne than in Reykjavik, and I had a lot of internet friends in Melbourne.


I saw the Northern Lights once, at my family's summer cottage in New Hampshire. I was twelve years old. My cousin and I were standing on the rowboat dock by the edge of the lake, lightning sparklers and throwing them so they looked like professional fireworks. I thought I heard a sound behind me - maybe one of the other people coming out of the cottage? and I turned around and the whole northern sky was filled with a shape-shifting glowing red blob. My cousin was scared, but I told her it was the Northern Lights, and sent her to tell the people indoors to come out and look. I have been trying to see them again ever since.

Whenever they're visible this far south, it usually winds up raining, so I don't see anything. I also went to Canada once, but we didn't go far enough north - we went to Montreal, rented a car, and drove out along the Saint Laurence River to the Gaspe Peninsula, then drove back to Montreal and flew home. So I've got to try for Nunavut, or Antarctica to see the Aurora Australis.

[thewayne]

From what I understand, in northern Europe where it's common to see the Northern Lights, there are some hotels that have a button on the phone for 'wake me when the Lights are visible'!  I think that's pretty cool.

[acelightning73]

There was no such service available at our hotel in Reyjavik. I did also notice that the sun didn't rise until close to noon, and it set around 3 PM. Since it was overcast and drizzling for three days, it didn't seem to matter much.

I occasionally fantasize about my husband and myself flying in one of those luxury roomettes for two. And if I imagine looking out the window, I see a faint hint of flickering light along the northern horizon. And there's a bottle of champagne, a pot of tea, and a tray of exotic munchies on the sideboard, and the entertainment system is showing the view straight ahead from the tailfin camera, and the music is the whistling roar of high-bypass turbofans. And we're on our way to some exotic locale to have an adventure together.

[thewayne]

THAT is an absolutely awesome fantasy!

[acelightning73]

We celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary last June. And we're still in love. I sometimes tell people "it's our differences that keep us together" - we don't get in each other's way. We are interested in different things - he laughs when I watch dance contests on YouTube, with very young girls in inappropriate dresses do the conga and the rumba and the cha-cha-cha with partners their own age. And I laugh when he curses at the screen when the stock market goes down.

[silveradept]

The investment is apparently about 50 million Euro, which is not a bad investment for 16 megawatts of geothermal power. Good for Croatia to tap into something other than fossil fuels for energy generation needs.

[disneydream06]

WOW, that is so "cool". :)
Hugs, Jon