Hot dry rock geothermal energy Hot dry rock geothermal energy Hot dry rock (HDR) is an abundant source of geothermal energy available for use. A vast store of thermal energy is contained within hot - but essentially dry - impervious crystalline basement rocks found almost everywhere deep beneath the earth’s surface. A concept for the extraction of useful amounts of geothermal energy from HDR originated at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1970, and Laboratory researchers were awarded a U.S. patent covering it. Although often confused with the relatively limited hydrothermal resource already commercialized to a large extent, HDR geothermal energy is very different. Whereas
Net energy gain of gasoline, and the combustion of coal is converted from thermal to mechanical, and then to electrical energy. Examples of energy sources include: The term net energy gain can be used in slightly different ways: The usual definition of net energy gain compares the energy required to extract energy (that is, to find it, remove it from the ground, refine it, and ship it to the energy user) with the amount of energy produced and transmitted to a user from some (typically underground) energy resource. To better understand this, assume an economy has a certain amount of finite oil reserves