What is G Power?

If you were riding a moneymaking machine and wanted to put your zillions into saving the world, where would you start? If you’re Google, you’re spending hundreds of millions of dollars to make electricity from renewable sources, which is cheaper than electricity from “dirty” sources. One of Google’s most interesting investments — for $10 million — is being made in “Enhanced Geothermal Systems” (EGS). While conventional geothermal looks for existing pockets of hot water, enhanced geothermal puts a pipe deep into the earth (where it’s very hot) and runs water down to get heated. Then the water is pumped back out. The resulting steam pushes turbines. While solar and wind power are intermittent in their production of electricity, EGS is 24/7. To compliment the investment, Google is putting $4 million into a drilling company as well as granting a university a half-million dollars to map North America for geothermal potential. To round out the picture, Google is also interested in companies that transmit and distribute power. One day our browsers may be running on “G-Power.” Questions can be sent to Jim Parks at jrparks@mac.com.