Geothermal power plant begins selling electricity to the grid

“In Utah, Fervo Energy’s Cape Station enhanced geothermal power plant has started selling electricity to the grid, with its first 33-megawatt block built and commissioned in just 23 months. Fervo plans to expand the plant to 100 megawatts by early next year. Unlike conventional geothermal plants, which depend on naturally occurring reservoirs of hot water, enhanced geothermal power plants create fractures in hot rock and circulate water through them, making it possible to generate geothermal power in many more places,” reports Human Progress.

TechCrunch adds:

“Geothermal company Fervo Energy announced Thursday morning that it had started selling electricity from its Cape Station power plant to the grid on September 30, one day ahead of schedule.

With it, Fervo becomes the first enhanced geothermal company to reach a key commercial milestone. The power plant synchronized with the grid about a week ago, bringing online the first third of what will soon become a 100-megawatt power plant…

From groundbreaking to commercial operations, the first block at Cape Station took 23 months to complete. As Fervo refines its process, it is aiming to complete future blocks in as little as 18 months.

That sort of speed to power should appeal to power-starved data center operators, who have been scouring every part of the energy sector for generating capacity. Geothermal can also be developed in phases, similar to how data centers are developed, allowing hyperscalers to bring racks online as demand ramps up.”

Even before Fervo began selling electricity to the grid, Google agreed to buy power from it for a big data center.

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

Fracking may lead to lots of geothermal energy.

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.