View source for Geothermal Steam

I woke up this morning with excitement in my veins.  It's a chemical thing - I ate the right food yesterday or something - but I was wired to brainstorm.  As I assessed my life and where I should go, I confirmed once again that for me, happiness will come from truly making a difference while I'm here on this planet.  And the holy grail, once again, is developing abundant clean sustainable renewable power.  And the idea came next: tap into geothermal energy deep within the earth's crust, ideally generating steam from water.  Drill deep enough, inject water, and receive steam.  Tap the steam either below the crust or at the surface.  The catch: is "deep enough" too deep?

I called my brother, the jack of all trades, to vet the idea.  He knows something about everything.  And true to form, he knew something about this idea already.  He had seen a documentary on a similar concept that is nearing production in the Australian outback.

== Further research ==
The Australian site is covered briefly here:

* [http://www.smh.com.au/environment/energy-smart/its-the-ultimate-hottie-20081202-6ps6.html Small news blurb about GeoDynamics]
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdYMXGtXbEA video]

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_geothermal_systems Enhanced geothermal systems (EGS)] is a general name for the idea.  [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_dry_rock_geothermal_energy Hot Dry Rock (HDR)]is the name for a specific version of EGS that uses "hot rocks" found a few kilometers below ground.  The Wikipedia entry says "this technology has the potential to power the world at little or no cost to the population."  Bullseye!  

This tech was [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Szdx8F_g3Z0 investigated] in the 1970's at Los Alamos.  It has since been researched all over the world.  Since the 1970's until recently, funding in the US has been minimal.  MIT led an interdisciplinary panel that produced [http://geothermal.inel.gov/publications/future_of_geothermal_energy.pdf this substantial report] in 2006.  MIT Energy Lab: (617)253-3401.  The goverment's EERE office also has [http://www1.eere.energy.gov/ba/pba/pdfs/geo_hotdry_rock.pdf information].

== Research funding ==
Since much research has already been done, I will focus on expanding upon it towards achieving the following goals:

* conduct a survey of geothermal resources within 4km of the earth's surface
* include earthquake risk assessment in the survey
* determine the project size (including number of injection and production wells) that has the maximum benefit/cost ratio
* determine the smallest project size that has a positive benefit/cost ratio (likely one injection and one production well)
* design a 4km well with minimal installation and maintenance costs
* create a working prototype

We're excited to try to get some research funding.  I want to keep the research totally open and cooperative.  No copyrights, no patents, no marketing.  Ideally, the results of any research will be the ability of anyone with enough motivation to tap into this energy source.  Opportunities:

* [https://www.fastlane.nsf.gov/fastlane.jsp NSF funding]
* Dan suggested [http://www.google.com/ventures/contact.html Google Venture], but [http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/04/the-google-ventures-cheat-sheet/ "overriding investment criteria will be ROI"], which may not fit my philanthropic agenda.

I am going to work on a grant application next.