Unyielding

Geothermal energy will power big data center in Utah

“Google has agreed to buy 396 megawatts of power from Fervo Energy’s Cape Station geothermal project in Utah, the largest enhanced geothermal power purchase agreement to date. For scale, that is roughly enough electricity to power a city of 300,000,” reports The Doomslayer.

The Wall Street Journal notes that “Houston-based Fervo uses technology pioneered by oil-and-gas drillers to frack rocks, create geothermal reservoirs and crank out electricity. The company is spending more than $2 billion at Cape Station and expects to start delivering power to the grid later this year for the first phase of the project. Google intends to buy the power for a data center in Utah—though it has yet to determine the location. The company still needs to work with local communities and go through state and local regulatory approvals before it can move forward with the plans.”

Google has an option to expand the agreement by about 600 megawatts by 2030. Fervo now has contracts for about 1,000 megawatts; other customers include Shell and an electric company, Southern California Edison.

When it went public earlier this year, Fervo raised over $2 billion. Last year, Fervo raised $462 million from investors such as Google and Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures.

Last year, a geothermal company used artificial intelligence to discover a big energy source.

Geothermal energy may radically expand due to technological advances, just as oil and gas production in the U.S. rose to record levels after fracking techniques were perfected. Fracking could lead to lots of geothermal energy.

The impoverished African nation of Zambia used artificial intelligence to find new mineral wealth.

Data centers use a lot of electricity. On the other hand, two recent studies say data centers actually reduce electric power rates over the long run, by spreading out fixed costs over more kilowatt-hours, creating economies of scale, and adding power consumption mainly in non-peak periods, enabling power companies to recover fixed costs at lower power rates.

Data centers have led to tax cuts for homeowners in places like Loudoun County, Virginia.

Data centers consume about 0.5% of the fresh water used in America, less than the amount factories use, and far less than the amount farmers use.

Hans Bader

Hans Bader practices law in Washington, D.C. After studying economics and history at the University of Virginia and law at Harvard, he practiced civil-rights, international-trade, and constitutional law. He also once worked in the Education Department. Hans writes for CNSNews.com and has appeared on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal.” Contact him at hfb138@yahoo.com

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