It's 2050, maybe sooner, perhaps a bit later and somewhere in US a 'special' drilling rig sets up in an open spot upon the grounds of a coal fired power plant. This is no ordinary drilling rig. For one thing it's all electric. For another thing it uses technology developed in the previous few years to vaporize rock. The multi-gigawatt power plant can spare a few megawatts and it does. The first few hundred feet of the bore hole are drilled in a very similar fashion as are any other drilling operations, except for the lack of noice from diesel engine.
When the 'basement' rock is reached, typically a few hundred feet deep, the method of drilling changes. The drill is 'tripped out' and the heavy drill stem is replaced by much, MUCH, lighter wave guides. When ready the gyrotron is turned on and a millimeter microwave is guided by the wave guides down to the basement rock.
The rock is vaporized.
Using the electricity provided by the power plant that's just a few feet away the microwave beam vaporizes the rock to a depth of about twenty miles. Then it vaporizes another bore and likely several more.
Then the plumbing starts.
When the fiddly bits are all connected a closed circuit is completed between the geothermal parts to the steam turbine parts of the power plant. Then pure distilled water is injected When water reaches the HOT ROCK it flashes to steam. At that depth the rock is HOT, plenty hot to provide steam for the power plant.
After that it's business as usual for the power plant except that it won't require any fuel. No coal, no natural gas. Nothing. Just the heat from the HOT ROCKS a few miles below it.
All the railways, railcars, and the coal that they carry to fuel the power plant is no longer needed to generate the electricity. With no fuel costs the price of electricity plummets. It might not ever get to be 'too cheap to meter' but it'll get pretty close.
Sometime later, somewhere in the United States one of those 'special' drilling rig pull into an electrical substation
A substation is a part of an electrical generation, transmission, and distribution system. Substations transform voltage from high to low, or the reverse, or perform any of several other important functions. Between the generating station and consumer, electric power may flow through several substations at different voltage levels. A substation may include transformers to change voltage levels between high transmission voltages and lower distribution voltages, or at the interconnection of two different transmission voltages.
Substations may be owned and operated by an electrical utility, or may be owned by a large industrial or commercial customer.
Substations are EVERYWHERE. Most urban, or small town, residents have one only a few miles from where they live. There's one only a couple of mile from me. Eventually everyone of them will be converted to GeoThermal. Most likely any large building, factory, or hospital that uses megawatt sized emergency power plants will be converted to geothermal also.
When unlimited, very cheap, non polluting, enviromentaly friendly, electricity is available to everyone our world will change.
For a treasure trove of information to to the Quaise website and an earlier post by TaskMaster
