Geothermal wells often cool down and become ineffectual with time.
A starting temperature of just 180C doesn't sound very promising either. Normally the higher the temperature the more energy you can extract and the faster you can extract it with a given amount of water/turbines/pipes.
Yes. The 'expiry' of a well is pretty much entirely proportional to how much energy you extract from it.
However, you can normally drill a new well a few hundred yards away and start afresh - so really it becomes a matter of how cheaply you can drill wells. And the US is a leader in well drilling, so I think could do it pretty cost competitively.
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Geothermal wells often cool down and become ineffectual with time.
A starting temperature of just 180C doesn't sound very promising either. Normally the higher the temperature the more energy you can extract and the faster you can extract it with a given amount of water/turbines/pipes.
Can they be conserved for a longer time if they are used for a fraction of the day, like night?
Yes. The 'expiry' of a well is pretty much entirely proportional to how much energy you extract from it.
However, you can normally drill a new well a few hundred yards away and start afresh - so really it becomes a matter of how cheaply you can drill wells. And the US is a leader in well drilling, so I think could do it pretty cost competitively.
Or drill horizontal, from your current well.
lava monsters do not sleep
Depends where. Some in New Zealand have been going since IIRC the 1950s
Some are quite a lot larger than this one too - 160MW ish.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_power_in_New_Zeal...
I'm pretty sure the individual wells have been redrilled a few times in that time though, even if a site has been operating for 70 years?
They should call those "volcanothermal" energy. Sounds cooler.