Geothermal potential explored locally

By Fred Porter Special to The Sopris Sun

“Geothermal energy” has been in the statewide news recently with an endorsement by Governor Jared Polis of a “Heat Beneath our Feet” (HBOF) initiative with the Western Governors’ Association.

As currently used, “geothermal energy” encompasses a broad variety of technologies utilizing the heat of the earth. Locally, we are familiar with natural “hydrothermal” hot water from the ground along the Crystal River and around Glenwood Springs. Geothermal power is the production of electricity from the earth’s hot water or steam.

Because the geologic availability of natural hydrothermal water is limited, the HBOF initiative focuses mostly on “Enhanced Geothermal Systems” (EGS) for power generation, and a bit on ground source heat pumps (GSHP). “Geothermal” heat pumps utilize the more constant temperature of the shallow subsurface, from 10 feet to 1,000 feet, to reduce the electricity consumption of heat pumps warming buildings. More specifically, these are geoexchange loops circulating tempered water to GSHP systems.

In Carbondale and nearby, large GSHP systems are currently proposed and already at work. A proposal to evaluate a networked district of GSHPs to displace gas heating at the Third Street Center and nearby buildings has been accepted by the Department of Energy. Federal funds should soon be available for design and engineering and CLEER will provide more details when the grant is finalized.

A “district,” “network” or “grid” of ground loops refers to multiple buildings sharing the geo-exhange water loop. This was pioneered at Colorado Mesa University and Ball State University around 2010. The idea of using this for heating conversions emerged from the Home Energy Efficiency Team in Massachusetts. There, the local gas company is being utilized for construction and financing since they’re experienced in laying pipes in the street.

The largest nearby GSHP system was built for the Powers Art Center (13110 Highway 82) in 2010. The geo-exchange tempering utilizes “slinky tubes” which are buried under a meadow to the east of the building. According to the staff, the HVAC performs perfectly, and inexpensively for a museum.

These ground loop systems have a reputation for low maintenance and long lifetimes. The buried heat

The closest geothermal power plant is in Sulphurdale, Utah, at the junction of I-70 and I-15. The 24-megawatt, above-ground power plant is similar to what would be used with EGS at the center of multiple wells. In an EGS field, these would be needed every five to ten square miles. Image courtesy of Google Earth exchangers are not subject to extreme temperatures, can’t be clogged with cottonwood seeds, hit by falling ice or wayward bike parking, etc. The other components are usually inside the building. Typically, they contain smaller quantities of refrigerant, which is less likely to leak because the units are factory-sealed. These use less power for heating during extreme cold compared to air source heat pumps. The drawback is higher installation costs and sometimes challenging ground loop installation. Power generation from geothermal heat requires hotter temperatures. burning power plant temperatures, which contributes to high costs. Unless water is naturally flowing, the heat is also difficult to extract. The “enhanced” part of EGS is the use of horizontal drilling and then fracturing for a permeable path between two deep wells. A closed loop of water is pumped down an injection well, across the path, and up a production well where the heat is exchanged with a “binary” power plant. Instead of steam, these usually use another sealed system with a turbogenerator, and dry cooling to operate without continues on page 19 continued from page 6 were to come home from caving and leave your headlamp on your back patio for a week, the fungus is probably not going to survive,” Jackson explained. “You come out with your hiking boots encased in mud and you leave those outside, that mud may actually provide some sort of protection for the fungus and it may actually survive sitting on your patio for a week.” Hence the need for decontamination before you put everything away, usually with bleach or soap and very hot water. Jackson loves bats and would like it if everybody else did, too. Bats provide a lot of beneficial services for humans, like eating mosquitoes, agricultural pests and other night-flying insects. “The other issue is bats sit in the middle of the food chain,” she explained. “So when we lose our bats — raptors, owls and, in some cases, snakes and raccoons lose an important food source.”

The HBOF initiative identifies oil and gas regions as candidates for EGS. Currently, no proposals have been announced for EGS power production in the nearby Piceance Basin, the area west of the Grand Hogback where local oil and gas production is located. However, some have been announced and tested in the Denver-Julesburg Basin in Weld County. Preliminary information shows lower temperatures and efficiencies and presumably higher costs of power production compared to recently announced EGS production in Utah.

EGS power plants are distinguished from wind turbines and solar panels by their ability to generate 24/7 and provide electrical “inertia” to the grid. They can modulate or even stop and start, but near continuous operation is probably needed to recoup construction costs, which are projected to remain many times those of wind and solar.

Coincidentally, a contrasting approach to “firming” the output from lowcost but variable renewable power is under construction in Delta, Utah. There, a hydrogen production, storage and electricity generation system is under construction. The power plant is comparatively inexpensive, but the hydrogen fuel created from wind and solar power is expensive, so the generator will be dispatched intermittently for backup. When the plant is not generating power, grid inertia will be provided by a component called a synchronous condenser. Hopefully we end up with plenty of both, as soon as possible.

More information on bats and WNS is on the CPW website and at coloradobatwatch.org

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A statewide survey by Hunger Free Colorado revealed that one in three Coloradans face food insecurity, a historical high for the state. Even more alarming, the survey highlighted stark inequities along racial lines when examining hunger.

- Among non-white and Latinx individuals, 43% are struggling to put food on the table, compared to 29% of white Coloradans.

- In households with children, 44% cannot consistently put healthy food on the table, posing risks to the long-term health and well-being of hundreds of thousands of children across the state.

- In households with children, 30% of the adults report regularly cutting back or skipping meals because there wasn’t enough money to buy food. You can register for the walkand-run, in English or Spanish, at: www.bit.ly/SANA2023

Participation in the Aug. 26 event is free and open to all ages. Local organizations, including LIFTUP, The People's Clinic and The Salvation Army will be present to provide information about available resources. In-person registration begins at 7:30am, and the walkand-run commences at 8 am.

Charles Meredith Moore, or Charley, or even Chas, died Saturday, July 29, in his home in Satank, just a month short of his 79th birthday.

His death was unique in that he planned it. Having spent several years in assisted living in Longmont because no dialysis center exists in the Roaring Fork Valley, Charley stopped the treatments and asked to be taken home, knowing he would soon die.

“I’m not getting any better on dialysis,” he said. “Enough is enough.”

Arriving seven days before his death, he was happy to be back in his old farmhouse, amid the books, paintings, photographs and memorabilia of his very active life. He had no doubt he had made the right decision.

As word of his return spread, his house began to fill with family, friends and neighbors, all in awe of his courageous life and now death, which he faced without fear.

Charley grew up in Denver, the fifth of seven kids, as was his father, an architect who collaborated with Buckminster Fuller to create the geodesic dome and his mother, a Canadian songstress and socializer.

Chas was smart, perceptive and voraciously curious, but always preferred the outdoors to a classroom. He graduated from Denver Country Day School and earned a bachelor’s in history from Lake Forest College. He spent some time in India with the Peace Corps and then tried law school at Denver University, until he realized he didn’t want to make a living off of other people’s problems.

During the Vietnam war, Chas was called before the draft board. He was granted conscientious objector status for ethical reasons — an extremely rare occurrence.

While coaching kids’ soccer in Denver, a wealthy family friend, recently widowed, asked Charley to help her clean out her husband’s “stuff.” Word spread about Charley’s willingness to help, and his kindness, trustworthiness and honesty. Unintentionally, he began creating his own vocation of caring for people, moving and storing furniture and fixing things. He never had another job.

Chas was rewarded handsomely for his kindness, bestowed with unending gifts of books, tools, guns and collectibles, including a classic ’55 Thunderbird from the Coors family and a house just one block away from his childhood home on Humboldt Street in Denver (he added a second floor on the garage for storage).

Charley gave away more than he got, which just kept the stuff coming… and he could remember the story behind every piece of furniture, vehicle, painting, etc.

Throughout his life, Chas climbed mountains and ran rivers all throughout the West. He was one of the very few to go left at Bedrock without dire consequences, and he volunteered his time and equipment to take CRMS students on numerous rafting trips.

In the early 1990s, Charley bought the Fender farm in Satank, as well as the Jensen house and Farmer’s welding shop. After some “horse trading” with George Stranahan, several acres were donated to create the Carbondale Community School and he began to move up from Denver, happy to be back near the land where he and his family spent summers camping on the Pabst family ranch.

Chas leaves behind two brothers, Mike and Hugh, one sister, Dorsey, three sisters-in-law, Ann, Jane and Clara, 12 nieces and nephews, 24 grand nieces and nephews, countless cousins and a full lifetime’s worth of stories and love.

After Mountain Fair, came a big ex-HAIL as the sky opened up and dumped over Carbondale. So much so, blocks of Main Street were closed while massive puddles were drained on Tuesday evening, Aug. 1.