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Geothermal power is generally harnessed in one of three ways. Large scale electrical generation is possible in areas near geysers or hot springs by utilizing naturally occurring steam, superheated ground water or using geothermal heat to heat a heat-transfer fluid. Experiments are testing whether a fourth method, deep wells into "hot dry rocks" can be economically used to heat water pumped down from the surface. A hot dry rock project in the United Kingdom was abandoned after it was pronounced economically unviable in 1989.
Geothermal-generated electricity was first produced at Larderello , Italy, in 1904. Since then, the use of geothermal energy for electricity has grown worldwide to about 8,000 megawatts of which the United States produces 2700 megawatts. The largest dry steam field in the world is The Geysers, about 90 miles north of San Francisco begun in 1960 which produces 2000 MWe.
Geothermal power is generated over 20 countries around the world including Iceland (producing 17% of its electricity from geothermal sources), the United States, Italy, France, New Zealand, MexicoThis article is about the country Mexico. For other meanings, see Mexico (disambiguation The United Mexican States or Mexico ( Spanish: Estados Unidos Mexicanos or Mexico regarding the use of the variant spelling Mejico see section The name below) is a co, the PhilippinesThe Republic of the Philippines is an island nation consisting of an archipelago of 7,107 islands, lying in the tropical western Pacific Ocean about 100 kilometers southeast of mainland Asia. Spain (1521-1898) and the United States (1898-1946), colonized, IndonesiaThe Republic of Indonesia the world's largest archipelago, is located between the Southeast Asian peninsula and Australia, between the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Indonesia borders Malaysia on the island of Borneo ( Kalimantan in Bahasa Indonesia), Papua N and JapanJapan (, Nippon/Nihon literally "the origin of the sun") is a country in East Asia situated on a chain of islands east of the Asian continent on the western edge of the Pacific Ocean. The largest of these islands are, from north to south, Hokkaido , Honsh.
In some locations, the natural supply of water producing steam from the hot underground magma deposits has been exhausted and processed waste water is injected to replenish the supply. In at least one location, this has resulted in small but frequent earthquakesAn earthquake is a trembling or shaking movement of the Earth's surface. Earthquakes typically result from the movement of faults, quasi-planar zones of deformation within its uppermost layers. The word earthquake is also widely used to indicate the sourc (see external link below)