Houston-based Fervo Energy announced on 24 September that it has achieved first power at its Cape Station project in Beaver County, Utah. The company said the milestone marks the first time a utility-scale enhanced geothermal system (EGS) project has reached first power anywhere in the world.
The achievement comes just over 4 months after Fervo became a publicly traded company, and less than a decade after it was founded by former oil and gas professionals in 2017.
The company is credited with helping pioneer the EGS approach, which combines horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing to create subsurface heat exchangers in hot rock formations. Water circulated between the wells is used to generate electricity at the surface through the Organic Rankine cycle rather than the steam-driven systems commonly used in conventional geothermal developments.
"This is a gamechanger for the geothermal industry. It establishes EGS as the defining new power generation technology of our time and we believe it shows that the commercial and technical maturity of EGS is ready to meet the urgent need for reliable, clean power,” Tim Latimer, CEO and co-founder of Fervo , said in a statement. “I could not be more proud of the years of hard work from Fervo’s employees, investors, suppliers, customers, and partners, which brought us to this moment. We are just getting started.”
Cape Station Phase I is an approximately 100-MW development comprising three 33-MW generating units that Fervo refers to as "GeoBlocks." The first of these units has now reached first power and is expected to begin delivering electricity under commercial power contracts by 1 October.
Fervo said it will continue ramping up the first GeoBlock as the full well system comes online while commissioning the remaining two GeoBlocks, which are expected to reach commercial operation by 1 January 2027.
The company is also advancing Phase II, which is expected to add 400 MW of generating capacity by 2028. At full buildout, Fervo said Cape Station will provide 900 MW of contracted generation capacity, enough to supply nearly 1 million US homes annually.
“Cape Station works because we treated the subsurface like an engineering challenge,” Jack Norbeck, chief technology officer and co-founder of Fervo, said in the announcement. “Years of drilling, completion design, subsurface modeling, and flow testing led to this moment, and this is the validation that matters most. First power is proof the science works.”
Earlier this month, Fervo announced a 396-MW power-purchase agreement with Google to enable the continued development of the Cape Station. Under the agreement, Google will purchase carbon-free energy designed to serve as a building block for a data center in Utah.