Geothermal plant in Nevada desert is helping power Google data centers

In the past, geothermal plants were limited to locations with the right conditions. Iceland, for example, uses a lot of geothermal power because it sits on a volcanic hot spot and has abundant underground reservoirs. Some companies later started injecting water underground in areas with the right geology. Fervo is taking that a step further, using fracking technology from the oil and gas industry to create fractures between deep wells that reach down to hot rock, then pumping water in a loop to harness that heat. At the site in Nevada, it dug two 8,000-foot-deep wells and drilled 3,200 feet horizontally to connect them. The hot water in the system produces steam that runs a turbine to generate electricity.

The same thing could happen essentially anywhere there’s room to build a power plant. “Instead of having to look for those perfect locations that have natural fractures and heat, we can just look for heat, which exists everywhere in the world, and we can create those fractures ourselves,” says Gabriel Malek, Fervo’s chief of staff. “So now, instead of talking about geothermal as 0.4% of power in the U.S., we’re talking about geothermal as 20% of the grid—potentially more—as we scale this technology.”

While fracking in the oil and gas industry is known for causing earthquakes, that largely happens when wastewater is injected underground, which creates pressure. Malek says that because its own system moves water in a loop, it poses much less risk. The company also develops seismic mitigation plans for each location, including sensors that can trigger operations to shut down if necessary.

The technology is much less expensive than nuclear or hydropower, and can compete on cost with renewable energy storage. The cost will also fall as the company scales up. In California, there’s already more demand from utilities than Fervo can meet, Malek says. That’s partly because the state has a requirement for utilities to begin sourcing geothermal energy. “They were explicit in saying, ‘We don’t want you to just load up on batteries,’ even though that may be a way to build resilience, because they’re looking for diversification,” he says.

For Google, geothermal power is likely to play a major role as it keeps working toward its 2030 goal. The pilot has shown that it can work. “This thing is delivering power to the grid,” Terrell says. “And if you look at that next tranche of technologies after wind and solar, all of them face some challenges to getting them to scale.” With geothermal, he says, “one of the things that was really appealing to us was that we knew that we could get projects online sooner rather than later.”