By Kennedy Maize
For decades, U.S. geothermal energy enthusiasts have been promising great advances from drill bit to megawatt. Many experts have predicted that geothermal could provide as much as 20% of U.S. electricity, with a renewable and non-polluting energy source. That’s greater than coal (17%) and nuclear (18%).
Geothermal’s tale has mostly been one of over-promise and under-delivery, a niche contributor to U.S. electricity generation. Despite its promise, today geothermal electric generation accounts for only about 0.4% of U.S. electric generation.
Now, things may be turning around, although we have heard that before.
On July 7, geothermal startup Quaise Energy of Cambridge, Mass., announced it had raised $134 million in a second round of venture capital financing for its pilot 50-MW deep-drilling project near an Oregon volcano. Project Orion will use a unique electronic technology to reach deep into the earth. That brings total financing from the Series B financing to $230 million.
The company said the project “will be the world’s first commercial superhot geothermal power plant, and the continued development and commercialization of Quaise’s millimeter wave drilling system towards depths in excess of 5 km.”
The company’s drilling technology doesn’t use the conventional rotating metal drill bits common to the oil and gas industry. Instead, it employs what it describes as “a millimeter wave drilling system developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology” to reach hot rocks at depths and temperatures not economically accessible using conventional drilling.
Quaise claims the potential “to reach rock at temperatures of 300-500°C in most places worldwide, enabling the construction of geothermal systems that rival fossil and nuclear energy in power density and renewables in cost.”
Founded in 2018, Quaise in 2021 began testing the gyrotron technology at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The company hopes to have its Oregon project online by 2030. Carlos Araque, Quaise CEO and president, said, “This round takes us from field-proven technology to first commercial revenues.”
In May, Fervo Energy, based in Houston, Texas, went public (Nasdaq:FRVO), raising some $1.9 billion and giving the company an estimated value of about $8 billion. Founder and CEO Tim Latimer, an oil patch drilling veteran, told the Wall Street Journal, “If we’ve shown that we can make this much progress with as little capital as the sector has attracted to date, you know, what actually happens if we’re capitalized appropriately, and how much faster can we move?”
Fervo uses the advanced drilling technology the oil and gas industry developed some 15 years ago to revolutionize their production: directional drilling and hydraulic fracturing, aka “fracking.” The technology expands the footprint of underground wells and breaks up tight rock formations, reaching and liberating fossil fuels. In Fervo’s case, the drill bits seek very hot rocks that can produce steam to turn electric turbines. Founded in 2017, among Fervo’s early investors was a Denver entrepreneur who made a fortune providing drilling equipment for the fracking revolution. His name: Chris Wright, now the U.S. Secretary of Energy.
There is nothing new about geothermal energy. Hot water from the earth has been used for cooking and heating for millennia, including district residential heating in the U.S. and elsewhere in the 1890s, according to Encyclopedia Brittanica. Geothermal electric production began in Italy in the early 20th Century.
Early geothermal projects sought out geysers and hot springs for their steam source. New Zealand commissioned commercial geothermal electric production in 1958 using this first generation technology. Pacific Gas and Electric in California started The Geysers, a giant project, in 1960, which now has 13 power stations producing about 750-MW of power and is owned by Calpine. Tectonically-active Iceland gets most of its electric energy and district heat from geothermal wells.
Ormat Technologies in the 1980s was at the cutting edge of the next geothermal technology, going after hot rocks and supplying the water to make steam. This became the dominant U.S. technology for some 20 years.
Then came Fervo and Quaise and what looks like the third geothermal technological goround, using new and more powerful drilling technologies to go for deeper and hotter rocks.
Geothermal is also generating substantial international interest. Among the major investors in Quaise is JERA, Japan’s largest power generating company. Japan is a tectonically rich country.
JERA executive Takeshi Kodama, said of the investment in Quaise, “As a global energy company, JERA understands both the scale of the challenge ahead and the scale of the opportunity that next-generation geothermal represents. Millimeter wave drilling technology has the potential to make geothermal a truly global baseload resource.”
India has taken the first, small steps toward geothermal technology where the government in the Ladakh region in the far northern Himalayas has drilled two 1,000-meter deep wells in the region’s high desert at 14,000 feet. It’s the first step in a 1-MW pilot project. According to a regional official, the project “will be India’s first demonstration-scale geothermal power project.”
In Germany, researchers from the Fraunhofer Institution for Energy Infrastructures and Geotechnologies and the electric utility RWE Power AG are collaborating on an examination of a back-to-the future using geothermal energy to for district heating of local buildings in the Rheinland region, where the once dominant German coal industry is dying.
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