For all the excitement and hype over the advent of wind and solar as sources of alternative energy, one would think that others would be invited to the party, too. And while some have been — hydro and nuclear power, in particular — one source has yet to really cut loose. Geothermal seems like it should be a highly sought after source of alternative energy but it is not.
Why is this?
Warren Buffet and his Berkshire Hathaway fund have dabbled, Iceland gets 30 percent of it power from geothermal sources and Kenya is powered by 44 percent geothermal. Many other countries use geothermal as a power source but it remains only about 0.3 percent of the total global power market.
The reason there aren’t more geothermal power plants is straightforward — the costs to build and manage them. They are expensive but that is not stopping people and companies from trying to develop them, and one of the more interesting proposals is along California’s inland Salton Sea, already home to 11 geothermal plants.
The proposed plant is named “Hell’s Kitchen,” appropriate given the Salton Sea sits below sea level like its neighbor to the north, Death Valley, and each are among the hottest places on earth.
The plant is proposed by Controlled Thermal Resources based in Australia. National Public Radio published a recent profile about the proposal, and one of the more interesting anecdotes from the piece relates to how the Salton Sea came about — it was never supposed to be, and if it weren’t for a flood caused by a break in a canal that ran for two years before it was stopped, it would be just another dried up dust bed.
If all goes to plan, the plant is expected to generate 1,000 megawatts that could power 800,000 homes. But there is an added twist to the proposed plant along the Salton Sea, and that is its potential to produce lithium that can be used in, among other things, electric car batteries.
Simbol Materials produced a few hundred tons of lithium at its Salton Sea facility before it ran out of capital, but as it did, Elon Musk offered to buyout the failing company — but terms could not be agreed to. Many point to Simbol and Musk’s interest as evidence of the potential for financially viable lithium development at the Hell’s Kitchen geothermal site and, if true, who knows what the value of the plant could become.