5 ms·

Fervo isn't just trying, they are succeeding in bringing the drilling advances used in fracking, along with other innovation to get through the harder rocks typ

Fervo isn't just trying, they are succeeding in bringing the drilling advances used in fracking, along with other innovation to get through the harder rocks typically encountered when not drilling for fossil fuels, to deliver dispatchable and storable energy. It's actually much better quality of power plant than nuclear because it can be scaled up and down throughout the day economically, whereas nuclear becomes even more uneconomic if it is forced to match the needs of the grid, and the reactors typically require far different designs than what is usually built (France has done a bit with this). I would bet on geothermal over nuclear in a second for future electricity generation. Its so much more promising, has a tech curve, and has far more innovation and advanced tech adoption.

Animats 2y ago
> It's actually much better quality of power plant than nuclear because it can be scaled up and down throughout the day economically... It's not that nuclear reactors can't be built to vary their output. It's that nuclear power is almost all fixed cost. If the average power level over a year is 50%, the power cost doubles. Geothermal has similar economics.
- caminante 2y ago
  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/google-fervo-geothermal-energy-partnership/ https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/sustainability/goog...
  - micro2588 2y ago
    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.
    - caminante 2y ago
      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
      - micro2588 2y ago
        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.
        caminante 2y ago
        > 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.
        micro2588 2y ago
        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.
        caminante 2y ago
        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-geothermal-utah-fervo-blm-lease/726796/ https://www.utilitydive.com/news/cape-station-enhanced-geoth...
- epistasis 2y ago
  Not quite, with geothermal the storage is built into the system by simply limiting the intake, which builds pressure and can shift energy production throughout the day. The cost of enhanced geothermal is roughly the exact same cost as nuclear today (if you exclude the very high cost of failed build attempts for nuclear), and it shares similar economics of a very very low OpEx to CapEx ratio. However the economics differ massively in that enhanced geothermal is getting cheaper as we build more, but nuclear tends to get more expensive as we build more. Geothermal is a technology, nuclear is a monument.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 2y ago
    > Not quite … The cost of enhanced geothermal is roughly the exact same cost as nuclear … shares similar economics of a very very low OpEx to CapEx ratio. It can’t be both not quire and the same. All else being equal, a five billion dollar geothermal plant running at 50% has the same problem as a five billion dollar nuclear plant running at 50%: where’s my profit? Sure, load following is trivial with geothermal, but nuclear generally isn’t trying to compete in that space, so we can discount the difference there.
    - epistasis 2y ago
      Unlike nuclear, that time running at 50% isn't thrown away capital expense, it is merely delayed power output that can be utilized with slightly higher turbine capacity, which is the cheaper part of the capex, and would be needed for higher power output anyway. For nuclear, adding thermal storage for time shifting would be the most equivalent to what's happening with geothermal storage, but with geothermal there's no additional capex or engineering needed.
      - TheSpiceIsLife 2y ago
        > that time running at 50% isn't thrown away capital expense I don’t understand how you think capex works? You outlay x on capital expenses to get the plant running, that’s all the plant and equipment. You run the plant at 50% it takes you twice as long to recoup your capex. Always happy to be corrected.
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  My understanding of that most nuclear power plants currently operating can already scale up and down to match demand. They don't because I fuel costs are so low that the power is essentially free when compared to idling.
  - jabl 2y ago
    That's correct. There's nothing technically special about the French nuclear plants that load follow. It's just that France has so much nuclear power in the grid that some of their nuclear plants do load following.
- brrt 2y ago
  Have you heard about xenon poisoning? Load following with a nuclear power plant is much more complex than it seems
  - jonkoops 2y ago
    This already makes a large assumption about the type of reactor you are using. For example, a liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR) does not suffer from the xenon poisoning issue, as do many other designs.
    - jncfhnb 2y ago
      I don’t believe there are any commercial LFTR plants?
      - lillecarl 2y ago
        It's an interesting thing that pro-nuclear people always talk about "Gen X" power plats with no issues and just a big fat gogo stamp on them, but when you ask about any commercial examples they all come up short. I'm pro nuclear, but I don't think using hypotheticals and futures is how to convince people nuclear is good, it's good because it works and it doesn't poison the planet (Yes there have been accidents and they have been dramatised but count deaths and it becomes as irrational as being afraid of flying)
        cogman10 2y ago
        It takes decades to turn on a new plant which is why you won't see the latest and greatest commercially deployed anytime soon.
        rtkwe 2y ago
        Molten Salt reactors are designs from the 60s-70s and afaik no one ever built on commercially. No one was willing to take a gamble on building a new design when we had working reactors already and approval for those was already difficult enough.
- Dennip 2y ago
  Can't you just burn up the power, e.g. with water->hydrogen conversion, water desalination, pumped hydro, etc. Whenever the grid isn't demanding 100% for your power you throw it at some other profit-generating venture. Granted you then have to built of of those power-using-things and only run it when grid demand drops.
  - pyrale 2y ago
    > e.g. with [...] pumped hydro That's done a lot in France, but there's a limited amount of pumped hydro available in the end. Until recently, countries with lots of available nuclear energy didn't really need to produce fresh water, and non-gas-produced hydrogen is still a WIP.
  - alach11 2y ago
    > Can't you just [store the power] If you find a cheap solution to power storage, you can make a lot of money. This is the key enabler for a 100% renewable grid.
    - EasyMark 2y ago
      you'd be the first trillionaire.
    - Dennip 2y ago
      We already do electricity -> hydrogen generation, the hydrogen is then stored in underground pumped storage (empty gas wells), and can be used in place of natural gas. Although presumably if you set up one of these facilities you need it running 24/7 to be profitable not just when there is a lull in demand elsewhere.
  - not_wyoming 2y ago
    Relatedly, I've read a couple of neat articles on using mine shafts as gravity batteries: https://bigthink.com/the-future/coal-mines-gravity-battery-energy-storage/ https://bigthink.com/the-future/coal-mines-gravity-battery-e... Major footnote here that I'm wayyyy out of my wheelhouse on this stuff, so there may be reasons that this doesn't work. I invite correction if that's the case so we can all learn some stuff :)
- scythe 2y ago
  >Geothermal has similar economics. Doesn't the ground itself act as an energy reservoir for geothermal? I haven't looked this one up, but it definitely seems like geothermal should be very dispatchable.
- lupusreal 2y ago
  Nuclear reactors can indeed be made to adjust their power level very quickly, but this typically requires the use of highly enriched uranium which introduces new costs and problems.
Cthulhu_ 2y ago
> I would bet on geothermal over nuclear in a second for future electricity generation. I don't understand that though; geothermal power is on paper much more low-tech, safer, cheaper, and deployable everywhere compared to nuclear. Why didn't it become the default way to generate power? Or is deep drilling in fact more difficult or expensive than nuclear fission?
- boringg 2y ago
  It is quite expensive, the heating reserves are finite and when you look closely at the details there are a lot of challenges. It isn't quite as easy as putting a pipe in the planet and pumping heat up (even though that is how it is portrayed).
- epistasis 2y ago
  > Why didn't it become the default way to generate power? It's because unlike nuclear technology, drilling technology has advanced massively. It was spurred on by natural gas fracking, trying to get very hard to recover fossil fuels as the easy stuff ran out. So there's an entire industry around this new technology that already exists but which has not yet been applied to geothermal. And for a long time there was little no no growth in electricity demand, which greatly suppresses the demand for new generation technology; basically everybody was competing to replace the natural gas, coal, and nuclear generation plants that were reaching their end of life. Now, the hype of AI has made for a great excuse to build a bunch of new technology, which brings a flood of new investment money, political will at Pubic Utility Commissions, and end-users looking to sign PPAs to secure electricity which helps raise that money for new builds. If you go based purely on when the technology was developed, sure, deep drilling is more difficult than nuclear fission, and in turn uses tons of new technologies at its base. And until this new drilling technology was developed, fission was cheaper, but it won't be cheaper for long. Drilling is a technology with a learning curve which means that costs fall as we do more of it. Nuclear has not had a significant learning curve, and in fact in many cases it has gotten more expensive as construction labor gets more expensive over time.
boringg 2y ago
"I would bet on geothermal over nuclear in a second for future electricity generation. Its so much more promising, has a tech curve, and has far more innovation and advanced tech adoption." I'm glad that you are so bullish on a technology that still has very little to show for itself. It should also be noted that the economics of geothermal installs also are the same ones as drilling for oil and gas -- so the cheaper drilling gets, the cheaper access to competitive resources. Majority of electrical power - solar + nuclear is our best energy shot. Heating probably go with heat pump for 90% of the market. That said - all of the above approach (including geothermal) - it shouldn't be this insipid argument of Geothermal vs Nuclear.
- epistasis 2y ago
  > It should also be noted that the economics of geothermal installs also are the same ones as drilling for oil and gas -- so the cheaper drilling gets, the cheaper access to competitive resources. The economics of enhanced geothermal are vastly different in that geothermal has a learning curve where by merely drilling more wells, we make future geothermal cheaper by innovating technology. Nuclear reactors do not have a positive learning curve, and in fact are getting more expensive due to the ever increasing cost of construction labor (see Baumol's cost disease). > insipid argument of Geothermal vs Nuclear. First, expressing a preference for the future of one technology direction over the other is fundamental to discussing technology. It makes a huge difference in terms of getting better understanding of them, and is a core facet of any sort of planning. Sure, we should produce both, but we should also make predictions of what we think will happen in the future so that we can learn from the outcomes, and also do proper allocation of relative amounts of funding. Nuclear has proven time and again to under deliver on all promises, results, and even ability to construct projects that have full regulatory approval. Geothermal is exactly the opposite. It has made realistic promises, overdelivered, and been fully transparent so far. To not take into account these histories would itself be absolutely "insipid" and poor planning. That's not to say that nuclear should be fully excluded, but let's take into account the huge amount of risk with funding anything nuclear due to the inability of the industry to meet goals. Any investment decision is a "vs." argument and must absolutely be looked at very very closely. And when we do that, every technology must be given a completely fair and honest assessment, we shouldn't put our thumb on the scale for nuclear just because we thought it wasn't given a fair shot in the past. We must look at it fully honestly without rose colored glasses, and I have yet to find somebody bullish on nuclear that doesn't wear extremely dark rose-colored glasses.

Animats 2y ago

> It's actually much better quality of power plant than nuclear because it can be scaled up and down throughout the day economically... It's not that nuclear reactors can't be built to vary their output. It's that nuclear power is almost all fixed cost. If the average power level over a year is 50%, the power cost doubles. Geothermal has similar economics.

caminante 2y ago
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/google-fervo-geothermal-energy-partnership/ https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/sustainability/goog...
- micro2588 2y ago
  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.
  - caminante 2y ago
    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
    - micro2588 2y ago
      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.
      - caminante 2y ago
        > 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.
        micro2588 2y ago
        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.
        caminante 2y ago
        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-geothermal-utah-fervo-blm-lease/726796/ https://www.utilitydive.com/news/cape-station-enhanced-geoth...
epistasis 2y ago
Not quite, with geothermal the storage is built into the system by simply limiting the intake, which builds pressure and can shift energy production throughout the day. The cost of enhanced geothermal is roughly the exact same cost as nuclear today (if you exclude the very high cost of failed build attempts for nuclear), and it shares similar economics of a very very low OpEx to CapEx ratio. However the economics differ massively in that enhanced geothermal is getting cheaper as we build more, but nuclear tends to get more expensive as we build more. Geothermal is a technology, nuclear is a monument.
- TheSpiceIsLife 2y ago
  > Not quite … The cost of enhanced geothermal is roughly the exact same cost as nuclear … shares similar economics of a very very low OpEx to CapEx ratio. It can’t be both not quire and the same. All else being equal, a five billion dollar geothermal plant running at 50% has the same problem as a five billion dollar nuclear plant running at 50%: where’s my profit? Sure, load following is trivial with geothermal, but nuclear generally isn’t trying to compete in that space, so we can discount the difference there.
  - epistasis 2y ago
    Unlike nuclear, that time running at 50% isn't thrown away capital expense, it is merely delayed power output that can be utilized with slightly higher turbine capacity, which is the cheaper part of the capex, and would be needed for higher power output anyway. For nuclear, adding thermal storage for time shifting would be the most equivalent to what's happening with geothermal storage, but with geothermal there's no additional capex or engineering needed.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 2y ago
      > that time running at 50% isn't thrown away capital expense I don’t understand how you think capex works? You outlay x on capital expenses to get the plant running, that’s all the plant and equipment. You run the plant at 50% it takes you twice as long to recoup your capex. Always happy to be corrected.
s1artibartfast 2y ago
My understanding of that most nuclear power plants currently operating can already scale up and down to match demand. They don't because I fuel costs are so low that the power is essentially free when compared to idling.
- jabl 2y ago
  That's correct. There's nothing technically special about the French nuclear plants that load follow. It's just that France has so much nuclear power in the grid that some of their nuclear plants do load following.
brrt 2y ago
Have you heard about xenon poisoning? Load following with a nuclear power plant is much more complex than it seems
- jonkoops 2y ago
  This already makes a large assumption about the type of reactor you are using. For example, a liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR) does not suffer from the xenon poisoning issue, as do many other designs.
  - jncfhnb 2y ago
    I don’t believe there are any commercial LFTR plants?
    - lillecarl 2y ago
      It's an interesting thing that pro-nuclear people always talk about "Gen X" power plats with no issues and just a big fat gogo stamp on them, but when you ask about any commercial examples they all come up short. I'm pro nuclear, but I don't think using hypotheticals and futures is how to convince people nuclear is good, it's good because it works and it doesn't poison the planet (Yes there have been accidents and they have been dramatised but count deaths and it becomes as irrational as being afraid of flying)
      - cogman10 2y ago
        It takes decades to turn on a new plant which is why you won't see the latest and greatest commercially deployed anytime soon.
        rtkwe 2y ago
        Molten Salt reactors are designs from the 60s-70s and afaik no one ever built on commercially. No one was willing to take a gamble on building a new design when we had working reactors already and approval for those was already difficult enough.
Dennip 2y ago
Can't you just burn up the power, e.g. with water->hydrogen conversion, water desalination, pumped hydro, etc. Whenever the grid isn't demanding 100% for your power you throw it at some other profit-generating venture. Granted you then have to built of of those power-using-things and only run it when grid demand drops.
- pyrale 2y ago
  > e.g. with [...] pumped hydro That's done a lot in France, but there's a limited amount of pumped hydro available in the end. Until recently, countries with lots of available nuclear energy didn't really need to produce fresh water, and non-gas-produced hydrogen is still a WIP.
- alach11 2y ago
  > Can't you just [store the power] If you find a cheap solution to power storage, you can make a lot of money. This is the key enabler for a 100% renewable grid.
  - EasyMark 2y ago
    you'd be the first trillionaire.
  - Dennip 2y ago
    We already do electricity -> hydrogen generation, the hydrogen is then stored in underground pumped storage (empty gas wells), and can be used in place of natural gas. Although presumably if you set up one of these facilities you need it running 24/7 to be profitable not just when there is a lull in demand elsewhere.
- not_wyoming 2y ago
  Relatedly, I've read a couple of neat articles on using mine shafts as gravity batteries: https://bigthink.com/the-future/coal-mines-gravity-battery-energy-storage/ https://bigthink.com/the-future/coal-mines-gravity-battery-e... Major footnote here that I'm wayyyy out of my wheelhouse on this stuff, so there may be reasons that this doesn't work. I invite correction if that's the case so we can all learn some stuff :)
scythe 2y ago
>Geothermal has similar economics. Doesn't the ground itself act as an energy reservoir for geothermal? I haven't looked this one up, but it definitely seems like geothermal should be very dispatchable.
lupusreal 2y ago
Nuclear reactors can indeed be made to adjust their power level very quickly, but this typically requires the use of highly enriched uranium which introduces new costs and problems.

Cthulhu_ 2y ago

> I would bet on geothermal over nuclear in a second for future electricity generation. I don't understand that though; geothermal power is on paper much more low-tech, safer, cheaper, and deployable everywhere compared to nuclear. Why didn't it become the default way to generate power? Or is deep drilling in fact more difficult or expensive than nuclear fission?

boringg 2y ago
It is quite expensive, the heating reserves are finite and when you look closely at the details there are a lot of challenges. It isn't quite as easy as putting a pipe in the planet and pumping heat up (even though that is how it is portrayed).
epistasis 2y ago
> Why didn't it become the default way to generate power? It's because unlike nuclear technology, drilling technology has advanced massively. It was spurred on by natural gas fracking, trying to get very hard to recover fossil fuels as the easy stuff ran out. So there's an entire industry around this new technology that already exists but which has not yet been applied to geothermal. And for a long time there was little no no growth in electricity demand, which greatly suppresses the demand for new generation technology; basically everybody was competing to replace the natural gas, coal, and nuclear generation plants that were reaching their end of life. Now, the hype of AI has made for a great excuse to build a bunch of new technology, which brings a flood of new investment money, political will at Pubic Utility Commissions, and end-users looking to sign PPAs to secure electricity which helps raise that money for new builds. If you go based purely on when the technology was developed, sure, deep drilling is more difficult than nuclear fission, and in turn uses tons of new technologies at its base. And until this new drilling technology was developed, fission was cheaper, but it won't be cheaper for long. Drilling is a technology with a learning curve which means that costs fall as we do more of it. Nuclear has not had a significant learning curve, and in fact in many cases it has gotten more expensive as construction labor gets more expensive over time.

boringg 2y ago

"I would bet on geothermal over nuclear in a second for future electricity generation. Its so much more promising, has a tech curve, and has far more innovation and advanced tech adoption." I'm glad that you are so bullish on a technology that still has very little to show for itself. It should also be noted that the economics of geothermal installs also are the same ones as drilling for oil and gas -- so the cheaper drilling gets, the cheaper access to competitive resources. Majority of electrical power - solar + nuclear is our best energy shot. Heating probably go with heat pump for 90% of the market. That said - all of the above approach (including geothermal) - it shouldn't be this insipid argument of Geothermal vs Nuclear.

epistasis 2y ago
> It should also be noted that the economics of geothermal installs also are the same ones as drilling for oil and gas -- so the cheaper drilling gets, the cheaper access to competitive resources. The economics of enhanced geothermal are vastly different in that geothermal has a learning curve where by merely drilling more wells, we make future geothermal cheaper by innovating technology. Nuclear reactors do not have a positive learning curve, and in fact are getting more expensive due to the ever increasing cost of construction labor (see Baumol's cost disease). > insipid argument of Geothermal vs Nuclear. First, expressing a preference for the future of one technology direction over the other is fundamental to discussing technology. It makes a huge difference in terms of getting better understanding of them, and is a core facet of any sort of planning. Sure, we should produce both, but we should also make predictions of what we think will happen in the future so that we can learn from the outcomes, and also do proper allocation of relative amounts of funding. Nuclear has proven time and again to under deliver on all promises, results, and even ability to construct projects that have full regulatory approval. Geothermal is exactly the opposite. It has made realistic promises, overdelivered, and been fully transparent so far. To not take into account these histories would itself be absolutely "insipid" and poor planning. That's not to say that nuclear should be fully excluded, but let's take into account the huge amount of risk with funding anything nuclear due to the inability of the industry to meet goals. Any investment decision is a "vs." argument and must absolutely be looked at very very closely. And when we do that, every technology must be given a completely fair and honest assessment, we shouldn't put our thumb on the scale for nuclear just because we thought it wasn't given a fair shot in the past. We must look at it fully honestly without rose colored glasses, and I have yet to find somebody bullish on nuclear that doesn't wear extremely dark rose-colored glasses.