If you’re familiar with Old Faithful, you won’t have any problem understanding how the concept of geothermal energy–and how it can be used as an alternative energy or replacing fossil fuel.

Geothermal alternative energy comes from the same place that petroleum does–deep within the earth. Geological formations, thin spots in the earth’s mantle, called “hotspots”, allow excess heat to escape from the mantle to the surface, where it can be accessed and converted to alternative energy.

Certain areas of the Earth’s surface are hotbeds of hotspots–Hawaii, with its volcanoes, Yellowstone, with its geysers and hot springs, and the entire country of Iceland. The heat from hotspots is transformed to alternative energy when wells are drilled into pockets of their steam, which has collected in underground geothermal “reservoirs”.

The wells will pump the hot water or steam to the surface; if it be hot water, the steam will be processed through a steam separator, and used to power an electrical generator.

If the wells are bringing up only steam, there is no need for a separator, and the steam will be the alternative energy directly powering the generator.

Should the hotspot be in a volcanic area, it can provide alternative energy when the partly molten volcanic magma, with a temperature of about 650 degrees, is used to boil pumped-in water, again creating steam to power electrical generators.

Wind and solar power, while gaining popularity as alternative energy sources, are only operable under the correct weather conditions. Geothermal energy, however, has no such limitations. It is also unencumbered by the waste disposal issues confronting the nuclear energy industry.

Further, geothermal energy, unlike fossil fuels, is a renewable alternative energy resource with a lifespan as long as that of the heat escaping the earth’s interior.

And every instant, of every day, the University of Utah’s Energy and Geosciences Institute estimates, the amount of heat being released form the earth is the equivalent of 42 million megawatts of power.

That’s a lot of hot air–but thanks to the science of alternative energy conversion, it doesn’t have to stay that way.