Comment by hunterpayne
14 hours ago
"I don't know how economical that is"
Sure you do. Think about it. Its just drilling a hole and making electricity from the heat. We have been able to do this for a very long time. So if people aren't really doing it much, its not economical. If it was now becoming economical, the article would describe some new way of doing it that makes it economical. The article doesn't, so you "know" it isn't.
PS This has been tried many time, it only works in very specific situations, usually places where building a full PP doesn't make sense or where you are making a lot of electricity for some other purpose (mining usually).
> Its just drilling a hole and making electricity from the heat
District heating does not involve making electricity.
Sometimes district heating and electricity generation does combine though:
> Wärtsilä’s combined power generation and heat recovery plant offering comprises solutions for combined heat and power (CHP) including dynamic district heating (DDH), district cooling and power (DCAP) and trigeneration for applications that require both heating and cooling.
https://www.wartsila.com/energy/engine-power-plant-solutions...
Not always, but as the sibling noted, there are plenty of combined heat and power plants. They recover as much of the energy as possible from the exhaust gas streams and run pretty efficiently.
The “new” way is plasma drilling.
That's still a science project, they are piloting zapping a small hole to 100m. Very uncertain whether it will amount to anything.
>>Sure you do. Think about it. Its just drilling a hole and making electricity from the heat
...what? What does that have to do with district heating? The one in Poland is coal fired, the one in the UK is electric.