Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Comparison of Geothermal With Solar and Wind Power Generation Systems
Comparison of Geothermal With Solar and Wind Power Generation Systems
Kewen Li
①Jacobson (2009)
②Chamorro, et al. (2012)
③REN21 Report (2012)
④Kenny, et al. (2010)
⑤Lucky (2012)
⑥WEA (2000)
⑦Stefansson (2005)
Figure 1 shows the modeled world wind speeds at (a) Distribution of world heat flow rate
100 meter. The resource of all wind worldwide was (http://geophysics.ou.edu/geomechanics/notes/heatflo
about 1700 TW and that over land in high-wind areas w/global_heat_flow.htm) average: 0.06 W/m2
outside Antarctica was about 70-170 TW reported by
Jacobson (2009). Note that the predicted world power
demand in 2030 would be 16.9 TW.
The modeled solar downward radiation in the world The comparison of resources, installed capacity and
is shown in Figure 2. The global average radiation the increase of power in the last three year is plotted
was about 193 W/m2 and that over land was around in Figure 4.
185 W/m2. The resource of all PV worldwide was
100000 100
Resource (TW)
10000 Resource(TW)⑥
Installed(TW)
1000
Increase, GW
10
100
10
1
1
0.1
0.1
0.01 PV Wind Hydro Geoth
PV Wind Hydro Geoth
(e) power increase in last three years
(a) Resource, installed power and increase
Figure 4: Resources, installed capacity and the
100000 increase in the last three years.
1000 Figure 5. One can see that PV’s power change rate
was the maximum, followed by wind power. The
100 above trend can also be seen in Figure 6, which
demonstrates the average annual growth rates of
10 renewable energy capacity during the period of
2006–2011.
1
PV Wind Hydro Geoth 10000
Geothermal
(b) Resource (Jacobson , 2009) 1000
Global Capacity, GW
Wind
100 PV
10000
10
1
0.1
Resource, TW
1000
0.01
0.001
1975 1981 1987 1993 1999 2005 2011
100
Year
58
0.8 60
Installed, TW
0.6 40
26
20
0.4 20
3 3 1 2
0.2 0
PV Wind Hydro Geoth
Figure 6: Average annual growth rates of
0
PV Wind Hydro Geoth renewable energy capacity, 2006–2011
(d) installed power (REN 21, 2012).
8
Note that the average annual growth rate of
geothermal power was about 2% while that of PV
6
was about 58% during the same period and up to 74%
Payback, year
in 2011 only.
4
COMPARISON OF COST, EFFICIENCY, AND
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS
2
The cost, payback time, and construction time for
different energy types are listed in Table 2. The data
are also plotted in Figure 7. The cost of geothermal 0
PV Wind Hydro Geoth Coal Gas
energy is very close to wind energy but much less
than PV. Compared with wind and PV, the main
disadvantages of geothermal energy may be the long (c) payback time
payback time and the construction period (Tc).
16
Tc, year
(US/kWh) (year) (year)
PV $0.24 1-2.7 0.3~0.5 8
Wind $0.07 0.4-1.4 <1
Hydro $0.05 11.8(small) 1
4
0.5 (large) 10~20
Geoth $0.07 5.7 3~5
Coal $0.04 3.18 1~3 0
PV Wind Hydro Geoth Coal Gas
Gas $0.05 7 2~3
Water
Land***
400 80
200 40
0 0
PV Wind Hydro Geoth Coal Gas PV Wind Hydro Geoth Coal Gas
100 1000
80 800
Capacity factor, %
Land
60 600
40 400
20 200
0 0
PV Wind Hydro Geoth Coal Gas PV Wind Hydro Geoth Coal Gas
2
(b) Capacity factor (f) Land: in the units of km /TWh
60
over 90% in many cases, as listed in Table 3. The
average value of the capacity factor of PV is about 14%
40 and that of wind is around 25%. Considering this, the
energy generated per year may be more important
20 than the power installed. The amount of energy
generated per year was calculated using the power
0 installed listed in Table 1 and the capacity factor
PV Wind Hydro Geoth Coal Gas from Table 3 and the results are plotted in Figure 9.
The energy generated by geothermal was more or
(c) Efficiency
close to PV after considering the capacity factor.
1000 10
Geothermal
Wind
Global Capacity, EJ
800 1
PV
0.1
600
CO2
0.01
400
0.001
200 0.0001
0 0.00001
PV Wind Hydro Geoth Coal Gas 1975 1981 1987 1993 1999 2005 2011
Year
(d) CO2: g /kWh
Figure 9: Comparison of generated energy for Figure 12: Geothermal footprints. (hb114.cc/news/
individual energy type. hydt/20090807103400.htm)
One can see from Table 3 that the renewable energies Geothermal power has the largest consumption of
all have the problem of significant footprint (Figures water because of the need of cooling. However the
10-12), occupying a large amount of land. water consumption by geothermal power could be
reduced remarkably by using new cooling
technologies.