the next great advancements will come not through the single application technologies but from the synergies created through the combinations/co operations of multiple technologies used to augment each other. the geothermal application in disused oil wells particularly in west texas is approaching reality as several corporate/university co operations are now designing systems to capture and utilized heat energy from the deep hot wells that no longer bring up enough oil to be run effectively and have been abandoned.

these wells greatly lower the cost of bringing steam turbines on line for geothermal energy. however west texas also has the advantage of great wind resources in the same regions as wells that have depth temperatures ranging in the 375 to near 500 deg f temperatures. by pumping water down these wells and producing steam turbine produced electricity can be economically has. now imagine that the water is pumped by high pressure wind pumps and as the “wet” steam at lower pressures is returned. this resource is augmented to higher pressure /higher heat stream through concentrated solar on it’s way to the turbines. since this is a recirculating system the water is then taken from it’s lower temperature/pressure state after the turbine in the collection vessels and pumped right back down the hot wells. in open bottom systems the oil and gas brought back to the surface through the return wells carrying steam may also be worth filtering out and collecting.