What are a few of the drawbacks of geothermal energy?

Geothermal energy might be a good choice in many cases, however just as with anything else there are certainly negatives. Listed here you will find a list of all the things that could be considered a drawback of geothermal energy. Higher than average construction costs   Definitely one of the number one weakness of getting totally free energy from a geothermal source certainly is the high installment cost. In case we are talking about professional use of geothermal energy this requires installing of power plants. This by itself is a massive investment, it takes a small fortune and time to be able to begin getting steam from deep inside the earth. Not surprisingly professional installers and proficient workers are essential and quite often they need to be relocated to the on-site location where geothermal energy shall be harnessed. Furthermore electricity towers, stations need to be established to carry the power from the geothermal plant to customer. This surely is a risky business. If we take a look at domestic geothermal use we can state that this kind of disadvantage is also there. A usual ground source heat pump system may cost around $3000 - $10.000 at a bare minimum. This can fluctuate but it is nevertheless higher than a normal pump system. Geographic location   The second issue that is almost always mentioned is location. This is not accurate in every case, so let's take a look in detail. To start with we should choose how we wish to harness the geothermal energy. Again, if we are talking about business use than location can be seen as a disadvantage. Basically the site must provide geothermal activity (the most effective areas are seismically active hotspots) in order to be able to successfully set up a power plant. If this necessity isn't met, one might be better off with solar farm or another eco-friendly energy source. For domestic geothermal systems placement is not really so important. Nevertheless it has to be considered, but it is less important as with business use. The reason behind this is that seismically active hotspots are not the only spots where geothermal energy exist. So if you think that the positioning of your house is a considerable disadvantage then you better think again. There is a constant supply of more gentle warmth - very beneficial for direct home heating usages, i.e. for a ground source heat pump system - at depths of anywhere from 10 to some 100 feet beneath the surface almost in any location on the planet. Only some people today would think so, but quite possibly the ground beneath your very own property has just about enough heat to control the climate in your house. Can not transport geothermal energy   Just as before, this is often a disadvantage in comparison to traditional energy sources. For instance it's not possible to just place the source of geothermal energy on a lorry and take it. You can do that with coal or solid wood but it is simply out of the question with geothermal energy. If the electricity is produced on a residential scale then there's usually no requirement to carry anything, so again this may not be that great of a disadvantage. Even the very best location could run out of steam   This once more is mainly correct for commercial usage. There are numerous causes, but it is true that often an excellent area could become vacant after a while. This disadvantage must be taken into consideration whenever planning and building bigger geothermal energy plants. Still not a widespread source of Energy   Unfortunately geothermal energy is still not too widely used. The expansion of geothermal energy use is around 3-5% per year. This is really very slow in comparison to solar power (~50%) and wind power (~30%). Just as before, this could be seen as a disadvantage. Slow Technology Improvement   And we have now arrived to the last disadvantage on our list. Geothermal Energy provides the possibility to generate plenty of gigawatts of electric power as a result of new solutions including EGS. Yet the technology progression is actually slow with challenges.