GeoRFCs

The Internet RFC series — now more than 9,000 documents spanning 50+ years — proved that open, numbered documents can organize a community, accumulate knowledge, and seed standards without requiring formal institutional overhead. RFCs range from early exploratory sketches to rigorous technical specifications, and everything in between.

GeoRFCs apply the same philosophy to geothermal energy: a numbered, open series where anyone working on geothermal can record an idea, a design, a model, a measurement, or a proposal — and contribute it to the community.

The GeoRFC Series

Initial documents launching the series.

• GeoRFC 1
  Arrays of Networked Standard Geothermal Wells

  One of our most effective tools in building the Internet was the RFC, short for Request For Comments. You can Google up my favorite, RFC89, written long before there was a Google. The RFC idea was to encourage communication among the many people working on the Internet, called Arpanet at the time. RFCs were a place to record everything from ideas to formal network protocols. It's been 50 years, and there are now thousands of RFCs. It was simple. You wrote an RFC. You submitted it to the RFC's editor. The editor decided whether to give the RFC a number and post it, or not.

  So, our small group is now working to scale up geothermal energy and thereby save the world. Now let's try GeoRFC. This is GeoRFC1. A few more are here to launch the GeoRFC series. Take a look at them. If you have something geothermal worth running up the flag pole, please do.

  — Bob Metcalfe