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.

• Small news blurb about GeoDynamics
• video

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 and everyone to tap into this energy source. Opportunities:

• NSF funding
• Dan suggested Google Venture, but "overriding investment criteria will be ROI", which may not fit my philanthropic agenda.

Further research

Hot Dry Rock (HDR)is the "official" name for a similar technology. "This technology has the potential to power the world at little or no cost to the population." Bullseye! Since much research has already been done, I will focus on expanding upon it towards achieving the following goals:

• conduct a survey of exploitable geothermal resources
• minimize installation and maintenance cost
• maximize sustainability

I am going to work on a grant application next.