World's First enhanced geothermal power plant completed in just 23 months

It is a nice field they have.

It happens to be right next to the DOE sponsored Frontier Observatory for Research in Geothermal Energy (FORGE [1]) site that established the temperature and ability to create permeability at depth using EGS.

[1] https://utahforge.com/

23 months to build is impressive, but the number that matters for EGS is thermal drawdown. If the fractured rock cools faster than modeled they have to keep drilling new wells, so I'd like to see Cape's output a few years in.

They tried to drill for one in Switzerland twice. One in Basel and one in St. Gallen but both times causes earthquakes significant enough that the whole project was scraped.

If the coffin needed any more nails, this puts the final kibosh on that cancelled SMR project out there that centered on Utah and Idaho, the one involving NuScale. Geothermal makes much more sense for them now.

There's a geothermal project at the Newberry Volcano in Oregon that also looks interesting (different people doing that).

This is pretty cool! I wonder if datacenters can get permits to colocate geothermal power + heat transfer. That might make permitting the actual datacenter significantly easier if there isn't a huge additional grid tie in.

Certainly a welcome development. Let's hope this pilot can be repeated and scaled.

I admit I don't know enough, but does it negatively affect the underground water a negative way? I read a while back that geothermal plants (can) use fracking like technique to heat up the water but it has negative effects on the local geology and underground water. But not sure if that's true hencey question here.

Do they have a conventional drill or does this involve some new technology? They aren’t using the microwave thing are they?

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