US company Fervo Energy plans to feed electricity into the grid in October from its Cape Station project near Milford, Utah, United States. If this happens, the facility will become the country’s first commercial power plant based on an enhanced geothermal system, CNBC Top News reports.
The company expects to use drilling and hydraulic fracturing methods developed by the oil and gas industry to generate continuous emission-free electricity. Traditional geothermal energy depends on specific natural reservoirs, while enhanced geothermal systems involve creating such reservoirs in rock.
How the system works
Fervo drills a pair of wells more than two miles deep, one of which has a horizontal section more than a mile long. The company creates fractures in the surrounding rock and injects water into one well. The water heats to more than 400 degrees Fahrenheit, returns to the surface through the other well, passes through a heat exchanger, and is used to generate electricity.
The geothermal brine is then cooled by industrial fans and reinjected underground in a closed loop. According to Fervo CEO Tim Latimer, the technology requires working with harder rock, higher temperatures, and longer well lifespans than traditional shale drilling.
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Cost reductions and contracts
The first wells at Fervo’s pilot facility in Nevada took 70 days to drill to a measured depth of 11,220 feet. During the first phase of Cape Station, the average drilling time fell to 21 days, while the measured depth was 14,483 feet. The cost was estimated at about $7,000 per kilowatt. For the second phase, the company aims to reduce this figure to $5,500 per kilowatt; the planned measured depth of the wells is 19,448 feet.
The first 33 MW power plant was assembled from separately delivered components. In the second phase, Fervo standardized designs and parts for 50 MW facilities, which it estimates will reduce construction time by more than 30%.
A new agreement with Google increased Fervo’s total contracted electricity volume to about 1 GW. The company’s electricity will also be purchased by Southern California Edison, Shell Energy, and NV Energy. Fervo is considering grid-connected projects and, in the long term, aims to locate generation facilities at customers’ sites, including data centers.
