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"Last year, Houston-based Fervo began operating a first-of-a-kind plant in Nevada. The 3.5 MW project is now supplying electricity directly to the Las Vegas–based utility NV Energy. The enhanced geothermal system uses horizontal drilling techniques and fiber-optic sensing tools to create fractures in hard, impermeable rocks found beneath the surface. Technicians then pump the fractures full of water and working fluids. The hot rocks heat those liquids, eventually producing steam that drives electric turbines."

"In recent years, both the U.S. government and private investors have started spending hundreds of millions of dollars to develop ​'next-generation' technologies that make it easier and cheaper to access the earth’s heat nationwide. If these systems reach commercial scale, they could expand the nation’s geothermal capacity by more than twentyfold, adding at least 90 GW of firm and flexible power to America’s grid by 2050, the U.S. Department of Energy said in a report released on March 18. That’s equal to nearly 10 percent of current U.S. electricity capacity."

https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/geothermal/ge...

p.s. Only writing this because of the BRK connection. I'm not going to go OT on the climate disaster. However, as BRK is strongly connected to energy, these connections in the transformation of energy will be frequent and continuing. There are insurance connections as well. The climate disaster is going to be an increasing factor in everything. Greenhouse gas emissions are higher than ever. The average global temperature for 2023 topped the pre-industrial average by 1.3C close to the 1.5C "limit" in the Paris Agreement. There were 28 weather events in the US last year totaling over $90B in damages. 5% of Canadian forest area burned in 2023. Scientists say we are close to five tipping points where consequences are serious, such as global-scale loss of capacity to grow major staple crops.

https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/geothermal/ge...

“the industry’s most pressing priority right now can be described simply as this: raising gobsmacking amounts of early-stage investment capital.“

Tens, even hundreds, of millions, to build pilot projects.

Perhaps there is an energy company out there, looking to put “gobsmacking” amounts to work. Any candidates come to mind?

The 3.5 MW project

That's basically a cigarette lighter in terms of actual energy needs.

That's basically a cigarette lighter in terms of actual energy needs.

New Zealand gets about 1 GW out of an area 2/3 the size of California. But NZ is literally bisected by a continental plate boundary / subduction zone, and enjoys catastrophic volcanic outbursts every couple of centuries!

The 3.5 MW project
===
That's basically a cigarette lighter in terms of actual energy needs.

Exactly. It's the equivalent of about 1.5 ordinary land-based wind turbines.

It has the big advantage that it is not sporadic, but the problem is, these things typically cost an order of magnitude more than windpower, so they are almost always small demonstration projects that use some public R&D money or they are there for a photo in the annual report, and not a real solution to energy needs.

dtb

Well, the article is about developing new geothermal technologies and funding them. It also discusses how costs are driven down as the tech develops. The article didn't try to comprehensively cover experimentation in geothermal generation. Developing this tech seems well within the reach of current knowledge unlike fusion. There could be room for geothermal at higher costs than solar because of their different characteristics as supply sources.

Although solar and wind costs have been driven to such low levels that they dominate new electrical source spending the expectation is for them to continue to decline.

Fun idea: Giant airplane to deliver huge wind turbine blades that are too big to go by road or rail https://radia.com/windrunner

Grid-scale battery installations are on a price-performance improvement trend as well.

I hope fusion projects, especially the much studied and experimented with Tokamaks, will succeed. ITER and Commonwealth Fusion could succeed.

It gives me some insight into predicting the future to read the late and somewhat famous Professor John McCarthy's thoughts on energy and other issues:

http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/index....

One point I got from him is that there are many alternatives though at higher costs. Our world is rich in resources as long as you don't think costs have to remain the same.

On into the brave new future!

Shaun

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