During this year’s Geothermal Resources Council annual meeting, it was great to sit down with Alex Richter of ThinkGeoEnergy, an informative blog about geothermal energy. The discussion is linked here.

The questions were not provided in advance, so those were my frank and initial reactions to those themes. Not that there is any change in my thoughts subsequently, but it might be useful to provide some background on those positions in more detail as they might relate to you.

There are five points that merit some elaboration:

  1. Legacies
  2. The GeoVision Report
  3. Modularity and the Evil Empire
  4. ThinkGeo Benefits
  5. Krushchev

Let’s step through each. The times in the video are provided for where the various discussions start.

Engineering Firm Legacy (00:00)

It’s respectful to explore the legacy of the organizations you work for (and importantly, interview with). How did it start? What kind of culture is in its DNA? Is it a fit for you? What were its milestone projects?

Stepping into a firm is like launching a canoe into a river that has been running already for a thousand kilometers. It is useful to probe its past and appreciate its prior contributions, and then recognize you will be propelling them forward. Hopefully you share that direction.

Your Legacy (Sisyphus): 2:45

Your own legacy will get built gradually but faster than you realize. When I was recently gathering some CVs for younger engineers at our firm for a proposal, it was impressive how even for the past five to seven years of work, they already have renewable generation projects lists that can be up to a score or so, spanning various technologies. Sisyphus may not be the greatest example, sure, but think of yourself as pushing a huge boulder. Seems quite slow at first but over time you will overcome that inertia and find yourself with quite the repository of project experience. (or be crushed)

GeoVision Report (4:52)

If anyone wants to read my (light) review of the GeoVision report, with some links back to the full document, see here.

America’s Geothermal Heritage (7:13)

A lengthier article discussing a perhaps dimly remembered US geothermal heritage can be found here.

Small Modular versus the Evil Empire (9:18)

People give a lot of lip service to “modular” similar to how they use “organic.” Brand something modular and bells and lights apparently go off and one is expected to ooh and aah about how incredible it is. Maybe, maybe not. Sure, it can be nice to have packages assembled in a factory with good QA and less field fabrication. If you have a small distributed energy resource, then sure, put a couple modular 100-200 kW units on it. But some of us want to put 25-50 MW+ on the grid at a time. An owner isn’t going to want to string together hundreds of small units to sum to that output, will they? Doubtful. Different settings call for different solutions, and evaluate carefully the benefits of micro, stepwise development versus taking larger bites (that admittedly may require more customization and stick-building) to realize better economies of scale.

ThinkGeo Benefits (14:40)

For those students or developers interested in the geothermal realm, ThinkGeoEnergy is certainly worthwhile to follow. Job postings, projects similar to yours, metrics, emerging technologies – there certainly is a wealth of information on there. It is encouraging to see the stream of news, people, plants and realize that there is so much going on. Add it to your feed if so motivated.

Krushchev

Apparently he and I have more in common than just hairline. An associate of mine points out that during a talk, think of your hands as energy weapons, that for the most part should be quiet at your sides, charging until you selectively use them to make a powerful point. With my constant banging on the table hopefully Alex’s camera wasn’t damaged! Practice controlling your hands more carefully for your presentations.

Summary

An enjoyable part about this talk was seeing figures drift across the background that illustrate some of the themes: young engineers from POWER that are key members of our geothermal teams, former students from the Iceland School of Energy that found a home in the industry, clients moving projects forward and other firms we collaborate with to move us all towards a greener energy future.

It was a pleasure to be interviewed for ThinkGeo, and it would have been even better if we could have had a sort of 50/50 dialogue on issues (as the earlier panel discussion was), rather than simply listening to me banter on. Hope there are some of these points or others that people can take away regarding perspectives on the geothermal industry.