More Geothermal Energy, Faster, From US Startups

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New geothermal systems are beginning to threaten the status of fossil energy for firm 24/7 power delivery, but there’s a catch. Most of these systems are still in the early stages of testing and demonstration. It could be years before the technology hits the market, and the US needs more electricity right here and now. Oh, wait…

More Geothermal Energy, STAT!

The US geothermal energy profile barely registers on the meter today. Traditional geothermal systems rely on a scarce few locations in western states, where naturally occurring rock, heat, and water factors are optimal for electricity generation.

Within these limitations, further restrictions involve the availability of transmission lines and other electrical infrastructure, as well as proximity to willing off-takers.

Those obstacles are beginning to crack as geothermal stakeholders begin to deploy advanced drilling and exploration methods borrowed from the oil and gas industry to create human-made geothermal conditions underground. The result is a new industry that can spread into more areas of the US, far beyond its current limitations (see more geothermal background here).

Geothermal Energy & The AI Solution

The question is how quickly these advanced systems can deliver the fossil-free kilowatts, and the Utah-based startup Zanskar has an answer. The company surfaced on the CleanTechnica radar last year when it earned a spot in the energy-forward plans of the US Air Force, and they have not let the grass grow under their feet.

Unlike other firms in the advanced geothermal field, Zanskar is still betting that naturally occurring conditions offer a good opportunity to produce power-quality energy, but they have been hidden deep underground where they are undetectable by conventional methods. To identify deep-earth conditions, Zanskar deploys an economical suite of modern assessment tools including artificial intelligence, geoscience modeling, and data collection.

“Our vertically-integrated, AI-native approach to geothermal development is delivering the speed to discovery and speed to development necessary to meet the new paradigm of rapid energy demand growth,” explains Zanskar co-founder and CEO Carl Hoiland.

“These latest deep drilling results only further confirm what we’ve known all along: conventional geothermal resources are far more abundant and bigger than previously believed,” Hoiland said, “and are the lowest-cost route to delivering gigawatts of reliable, carbon-free, baseload power at scale.”

The Pumpernickel Discovery

Zanskar already has one deep well under its belt, the Lightning Dock facility in New Mexico. The project involved upgrading an existing, conventional geothermal site that was considered to be unproductive, putting Zanskar’s business model to the test.

That worked out well for Zanksar, which bills Lightning Dock as “the most productive pumped geothermal well in the U.S.” if not the entire world. Last week the company announced another successful venture at a second site, located at the Pumpernickel geothermal field in Nevada, near the eastern Sonoma Range in the northern part of the state.

The Pumpernickel area was initially explored for geothermal resources in the 1970s, with little success. In 2006 researchers with the Geothermal Resources Council issued a new assessment and found indications that it hosts “extensive, structurally controlled, relatively high temperature geothermal reservoir suitable for electric power production,” but the report failed to stimulate much activity. A company called Sierra Geothermal Power Corp. picked up an option to explore the site in 2006, only to drop it just two years later.

With its advanced detection systems in hand, Zanskar gave the site another go and they hit the jackpot. “Zanskar’s drilling results at ‘Pumpernickel’ in Northern Nevada have proven one of the top-ranked geothermal discoveries in the U.S. of the last decade,” the company enthused in a press statement on September 18, adding that the discovery puts the site “on a path to becoming one of the largest geothermal power plants in Nevada.”

If all goes according to plan, Zanskar anticipates a phased-in construction timeline aimed at delivering first power in just three years.

Follow The Money

As described b the company, that three-year timeline is “faster than anyone thought possible,” putting Zanskar on a good footing to compete against fossil power plants and nuclear energy, too. As for competing on cost, Zanskar is among those making the case for further improvements, much as the cost of wind and solar has dropped over the years. The company credits its suite of assessment tools with significantly reducing the cost of discovery per megawatt “by an order of magnitude” compared to conventional methods.

Zanskar is not alone. The prospect of introducing a significant, economical new non-fossil energy resource to the US power grid also has investors banging on the door. One example is another Utah-based firm, Rodatherm, which just closed out its Series A funding round after oversubscribing at $38 million, which it describes as “the largest first venture raise for a geothermal startup of all time.”

Leading the investor charge was the Canadian firm Evok Innovations, with participation from TDK Ventures, Toyota Ventures, TechEnergy Ventures, MCJ, Active Impact Investments, Renewal Funds, Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment, and Giga Investments, among others.

Rodatherm claims that it can compete with fossil systems on cost, deploying a modular, closed-loop system analogous to a heat pump, achieving a 50% efficiency improvement compared to conventional systems based on water cycling. The company plans to focus its Series A haul on a pilot system in Utah, which is scalable to a full 100-megawatt facility.

Geothermal Energy Is Coming For Your Fossil Fuels

“Rodatherm’s advanced geothermal system is expected to achieve competitive levelized costs of energy with firm power, including fossil fuels, at early project scale and is designed to have a decades long operating life,” the company states.

Ouch! That sure sounds like Rodatherm expects to pull the rug out from under fossil fuels, though for some reason (maybe this one), US President Donald Trump’s fossil-friendly “American Energy Dominance” plan has embraced geothermal energy with no discernible objection from fossil energy stakeholders.

If you have any thoughts about that, drop a note in the comment thread. Before you do, consider that some fossil energy stakeholders have already demonstrated their willingness to adopt geothermal energy into their portfolios as illustrated by the interest of two leading oilfield services firms in the the US geothermal startup Fervo.

The potential for one hand to wash the other is also in play elsewhere around the world, the German geothermal startup Factor2 Energy being one example. Factor2 has come up with a geothermal system that piggybacks onto CO₂ storage sites, a value-added proposition aimed at attracting dollars to the carbon capture and storage field. On September 19 the company announced a seed funding haul of $9.1 million, led by At One Ventures with High-Tech Gründerfonds, Gründerfonds Ruhr, Verve Ventures, and Siemens Energy Ventures participating.

Factor2 Energy has developed a geothermal system using stored CO₂ as a working fluid. The system was developed by three principles at the company, who initially worked on the project at Siemens Energy. The seed funding will go to a pilot project with the potential for scale-up.

Factor2 expects that its CO₂ solution will cut costs by leveraging existing underground conditions and eliminating the use of water and brine as a primary working fluid. The idea is to leverage captured CO₂ at deep underground storage sites, where it absorbs heat from the surrounding rock. “As it absorbs geothermal heat from the surrounding rock, its density decreases, initiating a buoyancy-driven circulation known as the thermosiphon effect,” Factor2 explains.

“As a result, the CO₂ rises naturally to the surface via production wells, eliminating the need for subsurface pumps and significantly reducing parasitic energy consumption and mechanical complexity,” the company adds.

The closed-loop system runs the CO₂ through a turbine at the surface to generate electricity. The CO₂ is then cooled and shunted back down to the storage site.

Photo (cropped): The US geothermal energy startup Zanskar is among the stakeholders aiming to compete against fossil-fueled power plants on cost and construction timeline (courtesy of Zanskar).