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| Geothermal supplies around a gigawatt of power to California almost every day (Screen capture from California Independent System Operator) |
It's not the best day for solar and wind in California, it would seem: it's cloudy even in the desert, and there isn't much wind across the state. But the weather's always the same underground: geothermal power plants plug along delivering around 20 gigawatt-hours of power to the California grid every single day. Why aren't we taking more advantage of this 24-7 power source?
It's a fair question. Even on days with lots of wind and sunshine, California's geothermal plants often provide more power to the grid than any other renewable source, or at least come in in second place behind wind turbines. The constant flow of this renewable would seem to offer a solution to that whole "intermittent renewables" dilemma that's prompting hundreds of millions of dollars worth of research into high-tech battery banks and costly solar thermal storage solutions. And yet while wind and solar installations have grown several times over in the last few years, geothermal output in California hasn't grown at all.
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