The American oil and gas industry sparked an energy revolution a few decades ago thinking in a different direction – literally. Horizontal drilling, combined with hydraulic fracturing, unlocked new oil reserves and quickly propelled the United States to world oil and gas leadership.
Fervo Energy, a company whose headquarters are in Oil Capital Houston, aims at a similar revolution in geothermal energy by borrowing a page from the oil industry play book.
“Drilling is a borehole,” said Fervo’s strategy vice-president Sarah Jewett Nowsweek. “It’s a bit of the time” AHA ”that our founders really found when they started this business.”
Using drilling technology advanced by the petroleum and gas industry, Fervo pierces more deeply, drilling laterally and drilling in new places to unlock new thermal energy reserves.
Fervo Energy graciousness
“There is no reason why the geothermal energy wells should use older and obsolete platforms,” said Jewett.
Traditional geothermal energy is based on the search for steam -bearing resources and the drilling vertically to capture the heat of the steam. It requires not only the hot rock but also enough permeability in the rock to allow water and heat to come together. This made geographically limited geothermal power in these places with just the right combination of factors.
Fervo develops an improved geothermal system (EGS) which creates some of these conditions by making the rock permeable and injecting liquid where the hot rock is available.
Instead of simply piercing vertical wells, the company uses horizontal drilling techniques and hydraulic fracturing to harvest natural heat.
“We just use the heat of the rock under the ground rather than steam directly to create electricity,” said Jewett.
The American Ministry of Energy calls EGS “the next border” for renewable energies. Given that technology can use a much larger range of geothermal resources, DOE estimates that EGS has the potential to propel more than 65 million American houses and businesses.
“Really, Hot Rock is everywhere,” said Jewett. “It’s just a question of the depth of this rock and the economy that it really comes to (this) depth.”
The rock which reaches 400 to 500 degrees Fahrenheit is, in general, closer to the surface in the west of the United States than in the eastern states. Fervo concentrates efforts in the southwest of Utah, the development site of the CAPE station of the company where the company builds three power plants.
Fervo Energy graciousness
Jewett said the first Fervo power plant should be published online next summer with the first phase providing 100 megawatts of clean power. 400 additional megawatts of capacity are planned on the same site by 2028, and electricity buyers include Shell Energy and southern California Edison.
Last week, the company announced that a new financing cycle for the development of the CAPE station had obtained $ 206 million in investors, including BREADTHROUGH Energy Catalyst, founded by Bill Gates.
In another announcement last week, Fervo shared the results of one of his exploration wells which pushed the limits of geothermal technology. The deepest well of the company reached more than 15,750 feet, nearly 3 miles below the surface. The temperature of the rock at this depth is greater than 500 degrees, said Jewett, and the company tests what happens to bits, housing and electronics with very high heat.
“One of our ways towards innovation that we call” boring is magnificent “,” she said. While Wells reach greater depth and heat, companies provide parts and services test the performance of drilling equipment in increasingly severe conditions. “It was a really virtuous innovation cycle between us and our partners.”
In another parallel with the petroleum and gas industry, Fervo saw the oil consulting company Degolyer and Macnaughton to carry out an independent energy reserve estimate for the CAPE Station project. These reserve estimates are common when the oil companies develop a new resource, but the practice is new for the geothermal industry, said Jewett.
Degolyer and Macnaughton applied similar principles from oil analyzes To assess the thermal energy potential on the site and concluded that the Fervo site could produce 5 gigawatts of power. A gigawatt is enough to feed a city of 750,000 houses.
With these positive developments on technical and financial fronts, Fervo is clearly on a hot sequence. But as the rest of the clean energy sector, the company also looks closely at political developments in Washington.
The tax credits of the law on the reduction of inflation 2022 were a boon for new developers of clean energy technologies, not only because of the size of the credits, but because the lifespan of credit at 10 years has ensured long -term stability to attract private investors.
THE “A big beautiful” Bill Approved by the House of Representatives controlled by the Republican at the end of last month put an end to most of these clean energy credits And a debate is underway on a Senate version.
“We are fighting hard enough to preserve tax credits because for these very early projects, it is incredibly useful to have this support,” said Jewett. Fervo’s first phase of development would not be affected by changes, she said, because construction is already underway, but future projects could become more difficult.
Regardless of policy changes, however, she said that she was convinced that EGS power will find a market as a constant source of electricity for meet growing demand.
“Geothermal energy projects are able to provide that” always, “she said.” And I think that is why it has become so attractive. “