Nikola Lakic Fulfills Tesla's Vision of Dropping Geothermal Systems Down Where the Heat Is
Geothermal Worldwide, Inc.'s patented technology presents a radical approach to harnessing geothermal power by boring a fairly large hole and lowering the boiler, turbine, and generator down where the heat is, rather than using water or other fluids to bring the heat to the surface. They also have technology for boring the large diameter hole, enabling geothermal to be installed just about anywhere.
by Sterling D. Allan
Pure Energy Systems News
I got a call last week from Nikola Lakic, CEO of Geothermal Worldwide, Inc., a California based corporation, which has patented technology with a new approach to harnessing geothermal power by boring a fairly large hole and lowering the boiler, turbine, and generator down where the heat is, rather than using water or other fluids to bring the heat to the surface. They call it a Self Contained In-Ground Geothermal Generator (SCI-GGG).
They also have developed a patent-pending technology for boring the large diameter hole. "This drilling technology eliminates limitations relevant to depth and diameter of the well bore."
While geothermal is conventional free energy technology, and we usually cover more exotic approaches, there are a couple of things about this that piqued my interest.
First, Nikola shares the first name of Nikola Tesla, which is a common name Montenegro where he was born. His mother was born just a few miles away from where Tesla was born in Croatia.
Second, this approach is a radical departure from the usual approach; and we like radical.
So I went ahead and did a recorded hour-long interview with him, which you can listen to.
Traditional Geothermal
First, he contrasted his patented design to the two conventional geothermal methods. One uses hydrothermal reservoirs, pumping up the heated water to turn turbines, then cooling the steam and returning the cooled steam/water back to reservoir. A lot of heat is lost in the process of bringing the water to the surface.
The other methods is called Enhanced Geothermal System, in which bore holes are drilled, and the ground is fracked. I doubt there are many fans of fracking in our audience, given how it involves awful chemicals and can pollute the drinking water for centuries. The risk taken when fracking is that rather than pool, the injected water will just seep into the fractured openings and disappear.
Both of these methods require the use of large volumes of water. "99% of earth's crust is dry rock, no water."
Lakic' Patented Design
Lakic' method of dropping the generator assembly down to where the heat is (175° - 200°C), enables geothermal to be done essentially anywhere. And supposedly, his new method of being able to drill large bore holes efficiently and effectively, removes the limits of depth; though the hole drilling is still one of the large capital expenses of installing such a system.
In Lakic's design, the electricity is produced down in the hole, where the heat is, and transmitted by cables to the surface. It also involves a cooling fluid through a separate closed-loop system, so the generator doesn't get too hot. That "cooling" process also has the potential for secondary energy generation from its heat. The generator and cooling system would be thermally insulated from the heat in the hole.
He envisions the surface portion of the plant actually being in a basement, which could have grass grown over the top, so as to allow for multi-use of the real estate.
The installation costs would be significant, but because the fuel costs would be zero, the net cost, over time, would be less than coal or natural gas power.
He expects, using existing technology, that the boilers, turbines and generators will last 10 years down there, without servicing; and then they can be pulled up every 10 years to either do maintenance or replace them, to run another 10 years. The engineers who have reviewed Lakic' design have encouraged him.
The generator system in each hole will be capable of producing around a megawatt of electricity; and a plant would entail a number of holes dug fairly close together to come up with the total amount of power needed. That would require 1000 holes for a 1 GW plant, which would be the equivalent of a small nuclear power plant output.
As a demonstration of the feasibility of the design, Lakic envisions hanging such a unit over a lava tube in Hawaii right a way.
About the Company
Geothermal Worldwide, Inc. is a start-up, with a few consultants having engineering background. They are looking for funding, including a few million to secure international protection through PCT.
They are selling some shares of their stock privately, and they are going to conferences and energy summits to promote the technology.
They plan on selling licenses to big companies who could compete with each other in coming up with the best design to implement the technology.
About the Inventor
Nikola Lakic graduated in 1982 with a degree in architectural engineering. He holds 25 patents, mostly in areas unrelated to this technology.
He seems quite proud of a medical device for footwear that he has brought to market called http://inflasole.com. It's an inflatable sole that absorbs the shock from walking/running/activity. You pump it up according to your weight and activity, and it eliminates pressure points, improving blood circulation and massaging the feet.
Related Technology
As I was composing this story, I received an email from someone asking me what my thoughts were on Terawatt.com. In answering that email, I misspelled the domain name when taking at peek there, since it's been a while since I visited their site.
It turns out that http://TerraWatt.com is describing a system somewhat similar to what Lakic proposes, including a drilling technology to bore the large diameter hole. They even mention Nikola Tesla's geothermal quotation in their overview material. [Link]. Their system, however, doesn't appear to involved lowering the boiler/turbine/generator apparatus down next to the heat source.
Fulfilling Tesla's Vision
The best part of the interview, for me, was at the end, when I read a statement by Nikola Tesla about geothermal energy that we have posted on our Geothermal directory page at PESWiki. Lakic had never encountered it before, and he was honored to realize that his embodiment actually more closely approximates Tesla's statement than the traditional approaches. Here is that statement, with emphasis added:
"Another way of getting motive power without consuming any material would be to utilize the heat contained in the earth, the water, or the air for driving an engine. The difficulties of sinking shafts and placing boilers at depths of, say, twelve thousand feet, corresponding to an increase in temperature of about 120º C, are not insuperable, and we could certainly avail ourselves in this way of the internal heat of the globe. [The] internal heat of the earth is great and, in comparison with the demands which man can make upon it, is practically inexhaustible; since the heat contents of the earth are sextrillions of tons." -- Nikola Tesla ("Our future motive power"; Everyday Science and Mechanics; Dec. 1931)
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