Any powerplant will usually done in a pretty isolated area for safety reason, so i’d assume the chance of it happen is very, very slim. If location isn’t permitted it’s probably shouldn’t be build, especially for the type that need to deep very deep to access the heat, so solar panel on roof is probably the best way for any power generation that is placed close or in the populated area.
Comment on same shit every day, on god
rumschlumpel@feddit.org 3 days agoI’ve been thinking that for a while. Issue is that it’s risky, if you fuck up there’s a pretty high chance that there are going to be a lot of houses with cracks in their walls (assuming you’re doing it in a relatively densely populated area that doesn’t normally see earthquakes).
psx_crab@lemmy.zip 3 days ago
rumschlumpel@feddit.org 3 days ago
Here in Germany, that hasn’t been true at all so far. For starters, there aren’t any “pretty isolated areas” in the first place, since the entire country is pretty densely settled compared to e.g. Iceland. There are still some ongoing projects, though, IIRC they are usually being done for the purpose of district heating, which has to be near populated areas per definition. I think these types of projects aren’t as likely to create earthquakes as the ones for electricity in Iceland, though.
crater2150@feddit.org 2 days ago
I remember seeing a documentary about a village in Germany, where many houses were damaged by geothermal plants, caused by water entering layers where it usually didn’t reach and the material there taking in water and expanding. So it probably depends a lot on the local geology and also on the depth. I sadly don’t remember how deep the one in the documentary was.
I know a few people that got geothermal heating installed for their homes (in Germany), which goes a lot less deep than something intended for whole cities or districts. The one at my friend’s home is 50m deep, and it looks like anything less than 400m is considered “near surface”
psx_crab@lemmy.zip 2 days ago
Huh, interesting. I checked my country for this and it seems here we too have a coal plant right next to housing area, but it seems like the housing is the one creep toward the coal plant, not the other way around.
But then i’m not sure what sort of error will cause a quake and ruin houses. Is there any case happen to past construction?
thethunderwolf@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 days ago
I don’t think a coal plant would cause earthquakes.
From @crater2150@feddit.org’s comment:
village in Germany, where many houses were damaged by geothermal plants, caused by water entering layers where it usually didn’t reach and the material there taking in water and expanding
It’s specific to geothermal
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 3 days ago
assuming you’re doing it in a relatively densely populated area that doesn’t normally see earthquakes
dropping the latter assumption?
rumschlumpel@feddit.org 3 days ago
why?
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Assume it’s an area with frequent earthquakes
rumschlumpel@feddit.org 3 days ago
But that’s often not true. You can either just not do geothermal in areas that aren’t prone to natural earthquakes, force every homeowner to make their home earthquake-proof (which is extremely expensive, probably a lot more than just building batteries for solar+wind) or suck it up when they get damaged, or the owners of the geothermal plant have to pay for any damages (unlikey).
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 2 days ago
You mean, like fracking (for oil power) minus the poisoning groundwater part?
rumschlumpel@feddit.org 2 days ago
We could just not use any power source that severely damages our environment. Solar and wind don’t have these issues to this extend, even if you include the necessary storage capacity (batteries, hydroelectric reservoirs) and include the resource use for building them.
Though it’s not impossible to use geothermal energy without severely damaging the environment, you just need either a large amount of unsettled land (like Iceland) or you need to be really, really careful and limit the kinds of things you do - using geothermal energy for district heating apparently is a lot less likely to create earthquakes than what Iceland is doing.
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 2 days ago
Yes, geothermal heating is common here (switzerland). Power gen. less so.