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Comment by dylan604 | Hacker News Reader

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dylan604·

What's the geothermal power potential in Hawaii? Seems like it would be a good source for it to me.

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The only island with active geothermal activity is an island without many people (compared to Oahu).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puna_Geothermal_Venture

But to use geothermal power one does not need pre-existent geothermal activity, at least in principle. If the magma is close, you can get to a hot are by drilling, and then pump the cold water in and get the hot steam out.

Now, I don't know how difficult and expensive it is in practice. But as a "baseload" geothermal looks very good. Does not depend on weather at al...

One could install transmission lines between the islands if Hawaii's politics wasn't so broken.

Equally important: how much would said geothermal cost?

The Hellisheidi Geothermal Power Plant, which is the largest geothermal power plant in Iceland cost approximately €380 million to build.

However a smaller geothermal plant such as the Svartsengi Geothermal Power Plant cost only around €100 million to build

We'll see if it survives, since there's a large magma intrusion occurring just about under it. The recent eruption there (east of the plant) fortunately flowed away, and they've built a berm to deflect nearer eruptions, but an eruption directly under the plant, inside the berm, would destroy it.

yeah that is interesting. but then that issue is universal for places like iceland and Hawaii isnt it?

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