Houston-based startup Sage Geosystems announced this month an equity fundraise of $17 million which will be used to build what the firm claims to be a first: a geopressured geothermal system (GGS).
Sage said its proposed 3-MW facility will be built in Texas and rely on cyclic injections of water to store pressure that can be converted into electricity using turbines on the surface.
The company added that the concept should enable both short- and long-duration grid-scale energy storage in an aim to complement the intermittency of wind and solar energy sources.
Oklahoma City-based Chesapeake Energy led the Series A round which also included venture capital firms. Existing Sage investor Nabors Industries also supported the round, according to a release.
“The success of our GGS technologies is not only critical to Sage Geosystems becoming post-revenue, but it is an essential step in accelerating the development of this proprietary geothermal baseload approach,” Cindy Taff, CEO of Sage, said in a statement.
The company added that construction at a yet-to-be-disclosed site in Texas will start in the second quarter with expectations that it will be commissioned by the end of the year.
A pilot project run by Sage in 2023 that reused an existing wellbore to inject water produced 200 kW for more than 18 hours and 1 MW for a period of half an hour—or a total of about 3,600 kWh which is roughly enough electricity to power four US homes for a month.
