Geothermal Power Plants

This chapter provides an overview of geothermal power plants. For a renewable power technology, geothermal power plants have high availability and have to also compete against shale gas. There are many other uses being found for geothermal technologies such as food-processing facilities, gold-mining operations, physical therapy facilities, injection wells, and storage ponds. Enhanced geothermal technologies are forecast to be a significant growth industry worldwide for the next two to six decades because scientists know that the geothermal layer of molten magma is larger in total than all other energies on Earth. However, the technologies we need in order to handle and manage that magma under fail-safe controls are one of the great challenges the world scientists and engineers face.