There is enough energy stored beneath the earth’s surface to power all of our energy demands thousands of times over. The problem is, it’s thousands of feet beneath us. Out of sight. Out of mind. But what if we could get to it? What if we could harvest that power?

That’s the task at hand for Jared Potter. Jared Potter, CEO of Potter Drilling, is developing technology that his father, Robert Potter, initiated over 30 years ago while working at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Robert Potter worked on developing Hot Dry Rock (HDR) heat mining, which, simply put, is a method of harvesting geothermal energy by pumping water into hot, crystalline rock via an injection well. The water is superheated as it flows through open joints in the hot rock reservoir, and is returned through production wells. At the surface, the useful heat is extracted by conventional processes, and the same water is recirculated to mine more heat.

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New legislation in Germany is making geothermal electricity a viable option for the first time. Germany’s support of solar energy, mostly in the form of incentives and high return for consumers who sell excess solar power back to the grid, has made it a world powerhouse in solar energy generation and solar panel manufacturing. Now it promises to surge ahead in geothermal electricity generation, according to a story in Renewable Energy World. A new tariff structure has made deep drilling for higher temperature steam financially feasible, causing a boom in plant construction and a shortage of drilling equipment.

“… Germany could be generating several thousands of megawatts (MW) of electricity from geothermal sources in a couple of decades. More plants — some as big as 8-10 MW — are due to go into operation in 2009-2010 …. And looking 3 to 5 years ahead, there could be more than a hundred plants. About 150 geothermal power plant projects are in the pipeline representing an investment of 4 billion euros, according to the German government.” — Jane Burgermeister, Renewable Energy World

1,300 households get heat, and 500 households get their electricity from a geothermal plant in Neustadt-Glewe, which gets 97-degree centigrade water from a well dug 2250 meters deep.  Image credit: Exorka.com