The Economist article is unequivocal: SSP would cost FIFTY CENTS per kWh. That's just awful, way worse than earth-based solar or wind, even backed up with 85 watts per 100W so that they are base-load capable.

I take it you ignored the part that talked about the military being the initial customer, since they routinely pay $1/kWh?

If 20% of the fuel used in Iraq is for generators and the cost savings is a fairly conservative $5/gallon equivalent (on prices of $5-20/gallon), that comes out to a cost reduction of 1.6M gallon/day x 20% x $5/gallon = $1.6M/day. There may be additional cost savings since you've reduced the supply tonnage by ~14%; I'm not sure if the Economist costs include ancillary costs, like security for fuel convoys.

This is not an immediate-results project so it wouldn't be live for Iraq. However the odds of the US *not* receiving benefit from this tech once it becomes available is low.

Depending on the actual costs by a full engineering study, this has the potential to be a double win, cutting costs for the military and advancing science.

Depending on the age of the existing hardware, I think the cost savings from "recycling" the existing generator set probably outweighs the improved efficiency from a high cost fuel cell. Especially when the hydrogen is produced by a high-temp geothermal fluke.

They can switch to fuel cells as their gen sets reach end of life.

I did not say "fuel cell." I said "convert to hydrogen." Oil fueled power plants either use steam turbines or diesel motors to spin the generators.

Fuelcells would replace both the generator and the turbine/engine. I'm saying leave the generator but convert the drive system to hydrogen.

If they run steam turbines that means swapping the burners on the boilers from oil to hydrogen. That's very little additional cost beyond the hydrogen storage since burners have to be replaced regularly anyway.

As for the diesel internal combustion engines, most of of the ones used in large power plants are factory capable of running on a mix of diesel and natural gas. Adding hydrogen support is not exactly trivial but isn't a huge expense if done during periodic engine teardown. The additional labor and material costs involved in equipping with the hydrogen-capable fittings would be negligible with only new compressors as the capital expense. At that point those generators would be primarily operating on hydrogen with a small percentage of pilot oil to manage combustion.

Ta-da. Fuel oil power plant converted to hydrogen with roughly 95% of the generator set left intact.

The geothermal-created hydrogen fuel would provide the safe baseload needed to deal with weather that's not friendly to wind and solar (like tropical storms that last days).

TFA says This is not the first time drillers have encountered magma; the depth of the hit and the setting are, however, thought to be unique.

I'll summarize. a) this is dacite as compared to basalt (aka this is closer to "continental" magma than "Hawaiian" magma). b) It's close to the surface (2.5km) and c) it's freaking hot.

"We were at about 2.5km which is pretty routine drilling depth," explained Mr Teplow.

"But that is half the depth of experimental projects in Europe and Australia where they are drilling very deep into hot granite - some 5-5.5km down - and getting 260C rock; and here we're getting 1,050C rock."

I don't feel like doing the math right now but the power generating options from a 1000C heat source is very, very, very good.

If the geologists figure out how to find shallow magma anywhere near a cross-connected power grid, you can product a ton of energy.

For a localized environment like Hawaii, they could make huge strides in cutting external fuel needs. I'm generally anti-hydrogen because of the losses between generation and transportation but it would be very feasible for Hawaii to use the excess power from a geothermal power plant to produce hydrogen that could be transported the relatively short distances between islands by boat to provide fuel to other islands. I'm not an EE, but it seems like converting their current fuel-oil generators to hydrogen would be a fairly inexpensive process.

They already have an electric car initiative which would further cut down the bulk of their fuel oil imports.

You are right, you can sell GPL software. Mea Culpa.

I should have said "you can't make money selling GPL software" because anyone/everyone else can give it away.

In effect, you can't sell the software even if legally you can.