- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
There is a discussion on Hacker News, but feel free to comment here as well.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The project will feed electricity into the local grid that serves two of Google’s data centers outside of Las Vegas and Reno.
And it sees geothermal as a key part of the future electricity mix that can fill in whenever wind and solar energy wane.
But this effort is no ordinary geothermal plant, which would typically draw up hot fluids from natural reservoirs to produce steam that turns turbines.
This new project actually was built on the outskirts of an existing geothermal field where, in Terrell’s words, “there’s hot rock, but there’s no fluid.” To generate geoethermal energy there, Fervo had to drill two horizontal wells through which it pumps water.
Fervo also installed fiber optic cables inside the two wells in order to gather real-time data on flow, temperature, and performance of its geothermal system.
Unlike wind and solar farms that are sensitive to weather and time of day, geothermal projects can generate electricity on a more consistent basis.
The original article contains 578 words, the summary contains 159 words. Saved 72%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!