Geothermal energy is considered to be another important energy source for humans living on this planet earth. It is generated using the heat stored beneath our planet’s surface. Among all the sources of energy generation around the world, geothermal energy provides about 0.4% of the world’s energy. The word geothermal comes from Greek literature meaning which means “earth heat”. There are countless advantages of geothermal energy and people are taking huge benefits from this source of energy.
The main purpose of extracting the energy from the earth crest is to generate electricity. The generation of geothermal energy is dependent upon the natural supply of temperature, depth and quality of the water and steam in the area. There are number of uses of geothermal energy. As discussed earlier, they are used in the generation of electricity and in the development of heating systems for the buildings. This heating system uses geothermal heat pumps for the purpose. The area where the hot water is near the earth surface is pipes directly to the buildings using these geothermal pumps by district heating systems. Other uses of this form of energy include growing crops, drying fruits, vegetables and lumber etc. there are number of advantages and disadvantages of geothermal energy.
Geothermal energy is considered to one of the most reliable sources of energy, only if managed and developed properly. It is also considered to be most abundant and cleaner sources among all. Another biggest advantage of using geothermal energy is that as it is obtained from natural resources, there is no fuel consumption involved and also there are no dangerous emissions involved. Although there are other renewable sources of energy available, the positive aspect of geothermal energy is that it is not dependent on climatic changes. As it is been acquired from something that’s always available and which is present inside our earth crest, climatic variations do not disturb the availability of the resource. On a larger scale, the geothermal energy is generated using geothermal Power Plants. Normally geothermal power plants use hydrothermal resources to generate geothermal energy. Hydrothermal resources have got two most common ingredients namely water and heat. The benefit of using geothermal energy is that it uses low specific heat resources.
In New Zealand for example, geothermal energy is nowadays a hot topic under discussion. It is believed that by using such a low cost and abundantly available energy resource, the geothermal energy would contribute in the growing demand of electricity.
The conventional hydro and wind power stations can only achieve a load factor of about 30 to 50%, whereas the geothermal power station can bring this load level to 95%. The other advantage of geothermal in line is that the overall operating cost in running a geothermal power station is substantially low which is making it more reliable resources for energy generation.
According to latest research, scientists believe that geothermal energy is one of the safest of all energy resources which is clean and virtually inexhaustible. If this technology is bought in its full utilization it would be able to fill up the worlds annual needs 250,000 times over. The best part is that it won’t harm the climate or the environment. Thus, geothermal energy is a cleaner yet useful source of energy. Geothermal benefits are so much that countries are trying to invest in this field in order to bring economies of scale to their energy resources.
