Meta and Sage Geosystems are striking a deal under which geothermal energy provided by Sage will be used to deliver renewable power for Meta's US datacenters, intended to help reduce their carbon dioxide footprint.

According to Facebook's parent company, this is a first-of-its-kind project to tap into geothermal energy in parts of the country where it has not been possible before.

The scheme is expected to deliver up to 150 MW of new geothermal baseload power to support Meta's datacenter growth, with the first phase expected to be online and operating in 2027. No financial details of the agreement were disclosed.

However, this is a small program in comparison with the renewable energy projects that Meta says it has already signed up for. The social media biz has contracted for more than 12,000 MW in total, making it one of the largest corporate buyers of renewable energy globally, or so it claims.

According to news agency Reuters, Meta reckons the energy supplied by Sage Geosystems would feed the power grid, rather than directly supply any specific bit barns. We asked Sage to clarify its exact arrangements with Meta.

The current scheme was announced at a US Department of Energy (DoE) summit on geothermal energy in Washington, where the agency unveiled six other projects around the country intended to advance the technology and which will receive up to $31 million in funding. However, Meta and Sage Geosystems' work is not currently scheduled to get any government cash.

Houston-based Sage said its agreement with Meta demonstrates the potential for geothermal energy as a viable renewable energy source across America, which uses the company's proprietary geopressured geothermal system (GGS) technology.

While geothermal energy is currently mainly used in California, Nevada, and Utah, Sage claims that its tech employs both heat and pressure, allowing geothermal energy to be accessed virtually anywhere. Hot dry rock is a more abundant resource than the hydrothermal formations typically used for the purpose, making GGS tech a more scalable approach that could be expanded across the US and globally, the company believes.

"As energy demand continues to grow, the need for reliable, resilient and sustainable power is paramount, and our partnership with Meta underscores the critical need for innovative and sustainable energy solutions like ours," claimed Sage Geosystems CEO Cindy Taff.

Meta says this project is among efforts to invest in carbon-free energy to support its facilities and the wider transition to a cleaner and more reliable power grid.

Meta is not the only internet giant pursuing geothermal energy. In June, Google penned a deal with NV Energy to help power its Nevada datacenters which was expected to provide 115 MW of energy.

The six projects that the DoE announced funding for include Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which is developing a tool to assess wellbore integrity, while Los Alamos National Laboratory is working on a high-resolution acoustics-based system for evaluating geothermal systems under extreme conditions.

Funding will also go to a project to pilot a reservoir thermal energy storage (RTES) demonstrator, and another working on an ultrasonic measurement tool capable of operating for 24 hours in high-temperature geothermal environments to assess wellbore construction materials and practices.

"Expanding the use of new and innovative geothermal technologies will allow the United States to continue pushing forward into the frontier of the clean energy revolution by using the heat beneath our feet," Secretary of Energy Jennifer M Granholm said at the summit.

Geothermal energy currently generates about four gigawatts of electricity across the US, but the DoE said that a recent analysis suggests newer enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) could supply at least 90 gigawatts of power to the US grid by 2050, which it calculates would be enough to power more than 65 million homes.

Earlier this month, Sage signed an agreement with San Miguel Electric Cooperative in Texas for a 3 MW GGS energy storage facility, and said it would use the facility to buy and sell electricity to the ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas) grid.

The company also confirmed a study with the US Army at Fort Bliss base in New Mexico and Texas to explore the possibility of using its GGS technology to supply energy to the base. ®

https://www.theregister.com//2024/08/27/meta_geothermal_energy/