Larderello is a frazione

Frazione

A frazione , in Italy, is the name given in administrative law to a type of territorial subdivision of a comune; for other administrative divisions, see municipio, circoscrizione, quartiere...

of the comune

Comune

In Italy, the comune is the basic administrative division, and may be properly approximated in casual speech by the English word township or municipality.-Importance and function:...

of Pomarance

Pomarance

Pomarance is a comune in the Province of Pisa in the Italian region Tuscany, located about 60 km southwest of Florence and about 60 km southeast of Pisa....

, in Tuscany

Tuscany

Tuscany is a region in Italy. It has an area of about 23,000 square kilometres and a population of about 3.75 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence ....

 in central Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

. It is a geologically active area, renowned for its geothermal productivity.

Geography

The region has experienced occasional phreatic

Phreatic

The term phreatic is used in Earth sciences to refer to matters relating to ground water below the water table . The term 'phreatic surface' indicates the location where the pore water pressure is under atmospheric conditions...

 volcanic eruptions, caused by explosive outbursts of steam trapped below the surface. It possesses a dozen explosion craters 30-250 m in diameter. The largest is the Lago Vecchienna crater, now filled by a lake, which last erupted around 1282.

Larderello now produces 10% of the world's entire supply of geothermal electricity

Geothermal electricity

Geothermal electricity is electricity generated from geothermal energy.Technologies in use include dry steam power plants, flash steam power plants and binary cycle power plants...

, amounting to 4,800 GWh per year and powering about a million Italian households. Its geology makes it uniquely conducive to geothermal power production, with hot granite

Granite

Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...

 rocks lying unusually close to the surface, producing steam as hot as 220 °C (396 °F).

History

The region was known from ancient times for its volcanic

Volcano

2. Bedrock3. Conduit 4. Base5. Sill6. Dike7. Layers of ash emitted by the volcano8. Flank| 9. Layers of lava emitted by the volcano10. Throat11. Parasitic cone12. Lava flow13. Vent14. Crater15...

 nature and exceptionally hot springs. The Romans

Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....

 used its sulphur springs for bathing.

Known as Montecerboli until the 19th century, it became one of the first places in the world where geothermal energy was exploited to support industry. In 1827 François de Larderel, a Frenchman

French people

The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...

, invented a way of extracting boric acid

Boric acid

Boric acid, also called hydrogen borate or boracic acid or orthoboric acid or acidum boricum, is a weak acid of boron often used as an antiseptic, insecticide, flame retardant, as a neutron absorber, and as a precursor of other chemical compounds. It exists in the form of colorless crystals or a...

 from the volcanic mud by using steam to heat cauldrons to separate the two. Leopold II, Grand Duke of Tuscany

Leopold II, Grand Duke of Tuscany

Leopold II of Tuscany was the last reigning grand duke of Tuscany ....

 was an enthusiastic supporter of Larderel's scheme and awarded him the title of Count of Montecerboli a decade later. A town, named Larderello in honour of Larderel's work, was founded to house the workers in the boric acid production factory. http://www.edf.fr/html/en/decouvertes/voyage/renouvenables/geothermie/geothermie-01.html

The region was the site of a pioneering experiment in the production of energy from geothermal sources in 1904, when five light bulbs were lit by electricity produced through steam emerging from vents in the ground - the first ever practical demonstration of geothermal power

Geothermal power

Geothermal energy is thermal energy generated and stored in the Earth. Thermal energy is the energy that determines the temperature of matter. Earth's geothermal energy originates from the original formation of the planet and from radioactive decay of minerals...

.

Prince Piero Ginori Conti tested the first geothermal power generator on 4 July 1904, at the Larderello dry steam field in Italy. It was a small generator that lit four light bulbs. Later, in 1911, the world's first geothermal power plant was built there.
In 1911, the world's first geothermal power plant was built in the Valle del Diavolo ("Devil's Valley"), named for the boiling water that rises there. It was the world's only industrial producer of geothermal electricity until 1958, when New Zealand

New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

 built a plant of its own in Wairakei

Wairakei

Wairakei is the name of a power station, small settlement and a geothermal area a few kilometres north of Taupo, in the centre of the North Island of New Zealand, on the Waikato River.- Geothermal field :...

. In recent years concerns have been expressed about the sustainability of its steam supply, as a 30% drop in steam pressure levels has been recorded from the maximum levels of the 1950s.