USA, California:

Lake County’s Geysers Provides Electricity, Jobs — and Tours (SFGate)

The Sonoma power plant converts steam into energy
at the Geysers near Middletown in Lake County.

Way up in the Mayacamas Mountains of Lake County, great plumes of steam stretch toward the clouds, and the ground speaks, conversing in burbles and gasps, belches and sighs. On the hillsides all around, 83 miles of huge, silver gray pipe snake in a serpentine that looks like a massive water park slide.

It’s a magical place called the Geysers, a natural wonder spanning 45 square miles of geothermal hot springs fed by the Earth’s molten core.

Harnessed as a power plant, the site is the world’s largest geothermal electricity production facility, creating renewable, non-fossil-fuel-burning energy for large swaths of the North Bay.

Around the clock, seven days a week, its 15 plants hum quietly and efficiently, cranking out 6 million megawatts of natural, clean energy a year, enough to supply 39 percent of the United States’ geothermal generation, and 18 percent of California’s renewable electricity resources.

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