A Study on Some Other Likely Renewable Sources for Developing Countries

Renewable Energy

The organized utilization of geothermal energy, from hot springs & underground steam, for the production of electricity, and the supply of domestic and industrial heat, dates from the early years of the twentieth century. Since geothermal energy must be utilized or converted in the immediate vicinity of the resource, to prevent excessive heat-loss, the entire fuel cycle, from resource-extraction to transmission, is located at one site. This reduces costs and the risks of the environmental impacts of fuel cycle, and also facilitates environmental protection-measures (in contrast, the different stages of the coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear fuel cycles are normally located at widely separated sites). Unlike fossil-fuel or nuclearpower production, geothermal energy is not a technology that requires massive infrastructure of facilities and equipment or large amounts of energy input. The capital cost runs around $ 500,000 per M.W. and the electricity thus, costs 15 mils/kwh, which is almost as cheap as hydro-electricity. Both the total quantity of gases in the fluid and the relative concentration of their constituents, depend on the geochemistry of the underground reservoir. Geothermal steam contains carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulphide, ammonia, methane, hydrogen, nitrogen and boric acid. In steam dominated fields (for example, the Geysers, California, and Larderello, Italy), composition of discharged steam corresponds to that at depth. However in high temperature water-dominated fields, the proportion of gas in the steam depends on the extent to which steam has flashed from the original high-temperature water. The gases (except ammonia) are predominantly concentrated in the steam-phase and the gas/steam ratio decreases with increasing steam- proportion in the discharge.

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