Ryan Grim
@ryangrim
We really should be going all in on geothermal
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gFam.live (UrbanGladiator)
@gfam
Geothermal really doesn't seem to have dramatic downsides that I'm aware of. We have the technology, we have the skillsets and resources from the oil and gas industry, you can build it anywhere if you go deep enough and it can be scaled up or down for community builds.
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Trigs
@trigs
I think it's just upfront cost. If it was designed into more of our standards it might be more cost effective. But it's pretty expensive and has a long payback period because of it. Same reason why asphalt shingles are still most popular even tho better roofing materials exist on a lifecycle cost basis. Cheaper upfront almost always wins.
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gFam.live (UrbanGladiator)
@gfam
As more and more geothermal happens, it'll get much cheaper. Oil and gas is very expensive and has been heavily subsidized by governments - so if those subsidizes get removed then geothermal looks very competitive price-wise.
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Trigs
@trigs
Definitely agree in general. I've always liked geo thermal. I think the upfront cost turnoff is similar across many end-user level solutions, however. Society has been trained to expect supply side innovation and they just want to get metered at their door. Even with subsidies for home solar, installers have had to basically trick ppl into re-mortgaging their home with really bad financing terms just to make it a zero-dollar upfront cost.
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gFam.live (UrbanGladiator)
@gfam
Yeah, I really hope cities start seriously looking into community geothermal build outs to get the economy of scale benefits. That'd definitely be cheaper for individual houses.
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