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It’s happened to you on the internet, some enticing topic, a magic excelsior for weight loss, or a way to get rich quick. You have to open 30 web pages while they beat around the bush, then finally they tell you how buy the excelsior for a special one-time only price of a one month’s supply for only $90/month, or alternatively the place to invest to get rich quick.
There were enough hints in that tortuous process that I knew where they were going with this because I had already submitted an article to CleanTechnica on Enhanced Geothermal “Green” Energy. This is especially attractive at the moment because the best solution to green energy at this time is solar and wind farms with battery storage, but which is political poison to the current administration. Also, solar and wind farms have the problem that they don’t produce power 24/7 year around. Enhanced Geothermal Energy would not have that limitation. I will explain later why the current administration would manage to support any green energy source and enhanced geothermal energy in particular.
Generating power from geothermal energy has been going on for 100 years. The world’s first geothermal plant was built in Larderello, Italy in 1904, however, this has only been done in places where there are very hot thermal springs close to the surface of the earth. These springs only occur in places like Iceland, Italy, Indonesia, and in the western US in California and Utah. I visited one of these geothermal power stations in Port Cove, about 100 miles due south of Salt Lake City, Utah (see an aerial photo of the plant above).
The principal problem with this plant is that it generates only 25 megawatts of power. A power plant that generates a significant amount of power will produce a gigawatt, or at least 500 megawatts. The geothermal power plant that produces the most amount of power in the world is the Geysers in California, which produces 1.2 gigawatts. Cerro Prieto in Mexico is the next biggest geothermal plant at 820 megawatts, with the Larderello geothermal plant in Italy being the third largest at 769 megawatts. Is there a way to produce significant amounts of power from geothermal sources in more regions of the world? However, these are individual plants and no one else is generating significant amounts of electricity from geothermal power anywhere else in the world.
The temperature of the earth’s core ranges from about 8,000 to 11,000° F, so if you can drill down far enough and create a closed loop where you can send enough water down to the hot rocks below, heat the water, and bring it back up to the surface, you could generate unlimited power continuously any place on earth.
The University of Utah FORGE project was designed to test the feasibility of doing this.
Near Milford, Utah, the University of Utah with support of the US Department of Energy has been conducting the FORGE (Frontier Observatory for Research in Geothermal Energy) experiment. This is the site I visited some time ago where a large PV solar farm, a large wind farm, and numerous hog farms are co-located. FORGE has drilled an injection and production hole side by side as shown in the diagram above. The Enhanced Geothermal System (EGS) experiment used the two wells drilled through sedimentary rock into granite to a vertical depth of almost 10,000 feet. FORGE then uses technology developed by the oil industry to do fracking to change the angle of the drilling by 65 degrees and then the holes are drilled another 2000 ft at that angle. This was done to test the concept of deep geothermal energy extraction. Injected water has then fractured the rock in between and allowed heated water to be drawn from the production well.
Water is forced into the injection well through the fractured rock to the production well 300 feet away. The cold water forced into the injection well is heated as it traverses the hot fractured rock and is withdrawn at the surface at temperatures as high as 139° C from the production well. This is easily hot enough to produce steam to drive turbines.
The photo below shows the FORGE drilling rig near Milford, Utah.
The reason the get rich quick logic doesn’t quite work is that no one has built a cost-effective producing geothermal power plant so far using this technology. Also, you still have the relatively high cost of drilling the wells, you also need a water supply, although the water can be reused repeatably. You also have the possibility of causing earthquakes from the fracking. Unfortunately, a CleanTechnica expert on the subject doesn’t see significant world energy production by deep geothermal in the near future.
However, we may see the next step to solving this problem taken by next year.
Only about a mile away, the same technology will be put to use to produce a significant amount of power.
According to the Salt Lake Tribune March 9, 2024:
“Fervo Energy has announced new financing and technical advances that put the Houston-based company on track to open the world’s largest enhanced geothermal power plant in Beaver County in two years.
“The Cape Station plant is scheduled to start producing 90 megawatts of continuous power in 2026 (next year), but the plan is to expand to 400 megawatts by 2028, which would put it among the top 10 Utah electricity sources. It would be smaller than the state’s coal plants but larger than any hydroelectric plant in the state, including the Flaming Gorge Dam.
“”Were it not for transmission limitations, Cape Station could supply even more power,” said Chelsea Anderson, strategic communications specialist for Fervo. “We believe that Cape has at least 2 gigawatts of geothermal potential.”
My comment: The largest coal power plant in Utah (1.6 gigawatts) at Delta is 60 miles north of Milford and it sends its power to Los Angeles via lines passing near Milford. The capacity of the Delta plant will be reduced by half this year so those lines should have excess capacity.
It also will be ‘dispatchable’ power, which the Utah Legislature has made a priority. By varying the amount of water pumped through the system, the plant can produce power on demand or shut down when intermittent sources like solar and wind are producing.
According to Bill Gates, “The company’s pilot project in Nevada came online in 2023 with a capacity of 3.5 MW – enough to provide power to about 2,600 homes. Cape Station will be much bigger. Fervo has already drilled 20 of the 24 planned geothermal wells at the facility for Phase I, and the plant is expected to start generating 100 MW of power next year (2026). An additional 400 MW will come online in 2028.”
Thus, it appears that Fervo is working with a very deep pocket investor.
It looks like Gates is supporting the “all of above” approach to new technology power generation as he has put big money into small nuclear reactors. Many, including Mark Jacobson at Stanford University, see no practical role for nuclear energy power generation in the foreseeable future. It takes too long to deploy and requires large government subsidies, especially for insurance. No private company would ensure a nuclear power plant.
“Earlier this year, Fervo said it had drilled its latest Cape Station well into the solid granite in 21 days, which is 70% faster than the first test wells it drilled in 2022. The faster drill times mean lower costs. For the first 90-megawatt phase, the company expects to drill 20 to 24 wells more than two miles long.
“”We drill roughly 8,000 feet deep and 5,000 feet horizontally,” said Anderson. She said the company expects to “flow-test” the system, meaning producing hot water, in the next few months.”
Therefore, the technique is virtually the same as the Utah FORGE project. However, the fracking angle is 90 degrees instead of 65 degrees and the horizontal length is 5000 feet instead of 2000 feet at 65 degrees for FORGE
We will all be holding our breath until next year to see if Fervo can generate significant power by this technique.
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