Today, we had the opportunity to take a tour of The Geysers geothermal dry steam field and one of its 16 electricity generation facilities, the McCabe 5 generation plant. The Geysers is the world’s largest energy production site fueled by geothermal.
Twelve miles up a country road from Sonoma County’s vineyards, the field was first discovered by western settlers when a hunter came across the steaming fumaroles and told his friends he had stumbled upon the gates to Hades. Soon thereafter, the site was developed as a resort, and from the 1850’s tourists would brave a treacherous stage ride to “take the waters” for health and recreation at the Geysers Resort Hotel.
The first geothermal well was tapped to generate electricity in the 1920’s, and today the plants in the field supply power to the coastal region of from San Francisco north to the Oregon border. Although output has declined as the steam field was depleted, since the 1990’s, the operator, Calpine, has injected the wells with waste water from the nearby communities in order to generate more steam and more electricity.
It’s a fascinating place — a somewhat otherworldly presence in the northern California backcountry — and one of the few that actually seems to deliver on the promise of producing renewable, clean, and green energy, with little obvious downside.
Hardhat required
The winding road from the valley –
from vineyards to high chaparral
Blends right in – can you spot the geothermal energy plants?
A functioning geothermal well and generator
Clean electricity
Not surprisingly, Star Trek was filmed at a
Calpine plant (So Cal, not here)
The warp drive controls (actually, the control panel) –
it looks surprisingly like the fake blinky-light
“computers” in old science fiction movies
Calpine’s Unit 5 “McCabe”
There’s danger not only from the massive voltage…
…but from other things
One of the original wells, now capped
Can you spot the industrial plant?