I don't know what standard we're holding companies to for projects they're shutting down. From my experience, projects that are closing down don't get as much support prioritization, especially when they're deemed unsuccessful.
I share your sentiment that we could get even more; it sounds like you're seeing even more interesting things the public is not. I am grateful for what they have provided so far.
When you're dealing with solar (or any renewable really), you have to think about the generation of electricity and storage of that electricity.
Solar thermal plants can be used to generate energy, but they're not great at storing it for dispatch at later times. Even the link you provided has thermal storage as a component of the system-- you need to figure out how to dispatch electricity at night.
What's proposed is a cheaper storage solution, and they state it can still provide power after 10 hours.
The comment seems to imply Gavin Newsom decided to shut the plant down-- but it's owned by a private corporation, PG&E. Did we expect Newsom to take control of the plant and keep it open? I can maybe see a case for policy change, but I don't see California being that different from other states in this regard.
While I don't like the trend of closing nuclear plants, this isn't a straightforward decision just to "keep it on", from what I understand. There were seismic concerns for the plant, which is probably a worthwhile consideration given its location in California.
Additionally, I think how the plant performed cooling (drawing from the adjacent ocean) would also negatively impact the local ocean environment, and that type of cooling process was being phased out of California more generally.
FWIW, I'm a fan of nuclear, but I think it's worth digging deeper into underlying problems so we can see what the future solution may need to overcome.
What's the reason for the emphasis on weight? From reading the technical reports (from Makani), there were larger issues with the design unrelated to the weight.
As an example, Makani's Y-bridle design to attach the tether to the kite introduce stability issues during hover, and limited their control when the kite was aloft making circles, which in turn limited their power generation.
Could I get your help understanding your statement "industrial processes/power generation needs a higher differential"? Why does geothermal need a higher differential for power generation?
Power generation is already accomplished with lower heat cycles (e.g., binary plants mentioned earlier would probably use a rankine cycle to deal with the low heat), though we'd expect those power plants to have less nameplate capacity than something like a double flash-steam plant.
I think you're correct you'd get more efficiency with higher gradients, but I don't understand what's limiting about the lower temperatures. Is it economics?
How does a deep well extract all along its length? My belief was the production well will experience a gradient (so the bottom of the well will have the temperature you need), and the temperature will drop as you get closer to the surface (which also contributes to the calcite scaling problem geothermal can experience).
Also, I think a lot of wells add concrete casing (or metal, as indicated in the article) around portions of the well, which would prevent extraction around those zones of the well.
Cheap drilling would be a large boon for geothermal, considering the cost of surveying/exploring/drilling is > 50% of the cost of the development of a geothermal site.
I don't understand the articles goal of 300C target, though. While some types of geothermal plants do require temperatures that high, binary cycle power plants can use lower temperatures (130C) [1], which seems to open up more area for geothermal development since we expect most gradients between the surface and bottom of the crust to be ~2.5-3.1C / 100M. A lower temperature requirement would in turn allow you to drill less deep, which could consequently also decrease drilling costs.
Another thing the article doesn't mention: another interesting approach (aside from improving the technology, like drill bits) is with financing innovation. There have been / are government programs to de-risk the exploration/drilling cost by reimbursing the costs of drilling (80% for failed wells, for example) which also likely adds well data that could better characterize the underlying geothermal resources in regions (which would allow more accurate future development).
Really glad to see a deeper dive on geothermal though; its non-intermittency is a valuable characteristic separating it from other renewables that we're currently favoring (solar/wind). Because we generally break down energy generation to LCOE, it omits advantages like uptime of the renewable resource.
> At first, when you start working at a rapidly growing company, what you see is smart, idealistic, driven people working together to accomplish a goal greater than themselves. When you leave, unless you are willfully blind or exceptionally naive, what you see is a ruthless political arena— a modern day Game of Thrones, where machinations take place over email, and battles are won and lost over cups of light roast coffee.
I grew with a rapidly growing company. While I don’t disagree with the author that these sorts of environments exist in our industry (or most industries), or even pockets inside of a company, I don’t think this experience describes mine. Maybe I’m willfully blind or naive (or maybe I was too low level to experience this), but I’d caution someone of taking this strategy wholesale and start assassinating the careers of your colleagues.
Keep in mind, a major goal of a company is to make money. The leader of the company is generally aligned with that goal. Those are their incentives. They hire people to make them more money. If you play a different game according to this quotation:
> So your job isn't to make good decisions to improve company metrics.
Then, if the leader is competent and they determine you’re doing this, you’re probably going to get fired. They might also be bad, and you might get promoted if you fool them. But you’re also probably fooling yourself if you also have the goal to grow your own skills.
Instead, I’d suggest this mindset: When you’re joining a company, you’re joining a group of humans who created a system to help them to work together. Each system is a bit different, tailored to the company and the people who compose them. Some are passable. Some are terrible. But there is variance, and you should probably think about the strategy you employ when you join a new company (or re-evaluate how you operate in your current one).
You don’t need to trust the system, but you do need to learn to see and work the system. I guess if the environment is truly toxic and your only goal is to get promoted, exploiting as the author suggests might be working the system. However, there are systems you can work in a more productive way that might end up making you feel more fulfilled.
Here are some flight logs they released: https://console.cloud.google.com/marketplace/product/bigquer...
They also released reports that describe their findings; it's quite detailed (here's part 1 of 3): https://storage.googleapis.com/x-prod.appspot.com/files/Maka...
I don't know what standard we're holding companies to for projects they're shutting down. From my experience, projects that are closing down don't get as much support prioritization, especially when they're deemed unsuccessful.
I share your sentiment that we could get even more; it sounds like you're seeing even more interesting things the public is not. I am grateful for what they have provided so far.