Northern California Home To Largest Geothermal Field

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http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=global_warm&id=5739531

LAKE COUNTY, Calif., Nov. 2, 2007 (KGO) - The competition to unlock the energy within the earth is heating up. Geothermal is already the number one source of renewable power in California, and it's about to get even bigger. Northern California is at the core of this drive.

The earth's core produces intense heat, usually far below the surface. When water comes in contact with this heat, you get steam and that can produce the electricity. Seventy miles north of San Francisco is the largest geothermal field in the world, already powering close to 800,000 homes, and there's plenty more power where that came from.

One 30-foot section of drilling pipe at a time, the roughnecks at Bottle Rock in Lake County are digging deep. They're chasing the heat trapped 8,000 feet below in the earth's fractures or chambers. When water comes in contact with the 450-degree temperatures, you get steam.

"All we're doing here is mining heat. We're pulling heat out of the ground. The water is just a medium that carries heat back to the surface," says Louis Capuano, Jr., Themasource CEO.

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