Geothermal Energy Dry Steam

About 6 percent of the energy used in northern california is produced at 28 dry steam reservoir plants found at the geysers dry steam fields in northern california.

Geothermal energy dry steam. People use these resources by drilling wells into the earth and then piping steam or hot water to the surface. Geothermal power is power generated by geothermal energy technologies in use include dry steam power stations flash steam power stations and binary cycle power stations. In such dry steam operations the heated water vapour is funneled directly into a turbine that drives an electrical generator. Geothermal electricity generation is currently used in 26 countries while geothermal heating is in use in 70 countries.

Dry steam power plants systems were the first type of geothermal power generation plants built they were first used at lardarello in italy in 1904. Steam technology is still effective today at currently in use at the geysers in northern california the world s largest single source of geothermal power. They work by piping hot steam from underground reservoirs directly into turbines from geothermal reservoirs which power the generators to provide electricity. As of 2015 worldwide geothermal power capacity amounts to 12 8 gigawatts gw of which 28 percent or 3.

Geothermal power plants require high temperature 300 f to 700 f hydrothermal resources that come from either dry steam wells or from hot water wells. At peak production these dry steam geothermal power plants are the world s largest single source of geothermal power producing up to 2 000 megawatts of electricity an hour.