Groundbreaking technology generates hundreds of megawatts of carbon-free electricity, US Department of Energy gives a boost

Has the future without fossil fuels arrived?

On July 18, 2023, the American company Fervo Energy said it had achieved a breakthrough in geothermal technology.

Specifically, Fervo Energy conducted a 30-day test at its facility in northern Nevada, drilling a deep well and pumping water into it - where the temperature reached 191 degrees Celsius. The water was heated by the heat of the Earth, then Fervo Energy sucked the water back to the surface, where a turbine converted that heat into electricity.

Fervo Energy says its Enhanced Geothermal System (EGS) process can achieve 'a flow rate of 63 liters per second at high temperatures, enabling the production of 3.5 megawatts of electricity.'  One megawatt of electricity can power about 750 homes at once. At 3.5 megawatts, that number increases to 2,625.

After achieving this groundbreaking success, Fervo Energy will soon connect its Project Red site to the US grid as early as 2023.

Fervo Energy's full-scale commercial pilot project, Project Red, in northern Nevada. (Photo: Fervo Energy).

"This is a very important milestone in the development of advanced geothermal systems. It is the first application of advanced drilling and well stimulation techniques developed during the shale oil boom to geothermal and has demonstrated that they can be used to create artificial geothermal reservoirs that deliver high flow rates," Wilson Ricks, a laboratory expert at Princeton University (USA), told  CNBC. 

Following this success, Fervo Energy began construction on a 400-megawatt project that they expect to come online in 2028, which will power around 300,000 homes.

"Fervo Energy's successful commercial trial takes next-generation geothermal technology from the realm of modeling into the real world and starts us on the path to exploring geothermal's full potential," said Jesse Jenkins, a large-scale energy systems engineer and professor at Princeton University.

Currently, most geothermal energy sources are located near tectonic plate boundaries where magma approaches the Earth's surface, heating water trapped on the nearby Earth's surface. In the United States today, geothermal energy provides only 0.4% of electricity.

According to scientists, for a natural geothermal system to produce electricity, it needs a combination of heat, fluid, and rock permeability. In many areas, the rock has the necessary heat, but not enough permeability for fluid to flow through it.

An EGS creates this permeability artificially by drilling deep underground and injecting fluid to create fractures in the rock. That approach could significantly increase the number of potential sites for a geothermal power plant.

Fervo Energy reaches milestone in using oil drilling technology to exploit geothermal energy. (Photo: Fervo Energy).

Instead of relying on natural conditions, Fervo Energy is using drilling technology developed by the oil and gas industry using hydraulic fracturing to create reservoirs in hot rock deep underground.

'By applying drilling technology from the oil and gas industry, we have demonstrated that we can produce 24/7 carbon-free energy sources in new geographies around the world,' said Tim Latimer, CEO of Fervo Energy.

The US Department of Energy has also launched what it calls the 'Enhanced Geothermal Shot' — an effort to reduce the cost of enhanced geothermal energy by 90% to $45 per megawatt hour by 2035.

The US Department of Energy says it hopes to boost geothermal systems capable of providing clean energy to 65 million US homes.

Fervo Energy & Google: Towards a Carbon-Free Future

Google has led the way in committing to operate on carbon-free energy 24/7 by 2030.  "Tackling climate change is the next big step for humanity,"   said Google CEO Sundar Pichai.

One of the main advantages of geothermal power plants is that they are completely carbon-free – which is why Google signed a deal with Fervo Energy in 2021 with the goal of running all of its offices and data centers on carbon-free energy 24/7 by 2030.

To achieve that goal, Google has had to buy a lot of renewable energy to support all of its energy-intensive computing processes. Unlike wind and solar power, which are intermittent,  geothermal energy is a carbon-free resource that is 'always on,' reducing humanity's hourly reliance on fossil fuels , said Michael Terrell, Google's senior director of energy and climate.

Simulated image of geothermal technology. The heat from the Earth's core can provide carbon-free electricity for humans. (Photo: Internet)

"This is the first time an energy company has demonstrated that an Enhanced Geothermal System (EGS) can operate at a commercial scale. It's been a long road to achieving this breakthrough, as scientists have been trying to make EGS a reality since the 1970s," Bloomberg  said  .

'Achieving the goal of 24/7 carbon-free power will require new, clean, sustainable energy sources to complement diverse renewables such as wind and solar,' added Michael Terrell . 'We partnered with Fervo Energy in 2021 because we saw significant potential in their geothermal technology to unlock 24/7 carbon-free critical power at scale, and we are excited to see Fervo Energy achieve this important technology milestone.'

As part of the partnership, Google is developing artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) systems to improve Fervo Energy's efficiency, and in return, Fervo Energy is adding clean energy to the grid in the state of Nevada, where Google is a major clean energy customer.