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Comment by caminante | Hacker News Reader

Geothermal isn't cheap. Trimming those fixed costs means siting on fault lines/earthquakes and higher opex (insurance).

Fervo/Google got dogged for announcing their plant in UT because they avoided disclosures about the capacity [0]. It's more of a very small scale pilot of a couple MWs, but they buried key facts about the project assumedly on purpose due to lack of significance.

[0] https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/sustainability/goog...

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Fervo's initial demonstration project was next to an existing power plant in Nevada which previously failed to produce at it's stated capacity over time (Battle Mountain) so they were able to tie in extra MWt capacity to an existing ORC turbine. Fervo's technology has to be located somewhat near existing traditional hydrothermal geothermal resources because it's the convection along an exiting fault for hundreds of thousands of years that produces an above background thermal gradient near enough to the surface for it to be economical. That is true for their demonstration area in Utah which is located near the existing Blundel geothermal power plant in Milford Utah.

Sure. Exposing these situational constraints and free benefits (third-party sunk costs) aligns with my stance.

I don't agree with the above comment:

> Fervo isn't just trying, they are succeeding

I think as a tech demonstration project it was successful because they were a bit conservative in some ways that will make the economics look worse. I agree it's far from "geothermal everywhere" which seems to be the hype. You can't extrapolate that from one successful EGS well literally right next to an existing geothermal power plant.

> they were a bit conservative in some ways that will make the economics look worse

Or they simply ran into headwinds on a speculative project. I'll "take the under" when your PR is cagey about basic project attributes.

They do a good job of publishing their results in technical industry publications (advancing the field overall in a surprisingly open way) but I agree can be misleading in their marketing.

It will be interesting to see the results of the Cape project once they do multi-well laterals from a single pad power plant with larger diameter wells. That is really more a demonstration of power plant economics beyond the technical feasibility of creating a horizontally fracked reservoir that can be operated for a year.

Ah!

Cape Station does look much more significant. [0] 400MW of power plant capacity with 2028 COD and mostly contracted with SoCal Edison? Good job.

[0] https://www.utilitydive.com/news/cape-station-enhanced-geoth...

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