Geothermal company Fervo Energy announced on Thursday that it had started selling electricity from its Cape Station power plant to the grid on 30 September, one day ahead of schedule.
The company said it is the first enhanced geothermal company to reach a key commercial milestone. The plant synchronised with the grid about a week earlier, bringing online the first third of what is planned to become a 100-megawatt power plant.
The first block at Cape Station took 23 months to complete from groundbreaking to commercial operations. Fervo is aiming to complete future blocks in as little as 18 months as it refines its process.
Fervo co-founder and CEO Tim Latimer said in a statement: “No team has ever built a project like this anywhere in the world, and we did it ahead of schedule.”
The entire site could potentially generate as much as 4 gigawatts of electricity, Fervo previously told TechCrunch. Google, Southern California Edison and others have committed to buying power from the Cape Station project.
Fervo is one of several companies developing enhanced geothermal power plants. While traditional geothermal power taps heat sources close to the surface, Fervo and its peers drill deeper because deeper rock is hotter, opening more opportunities for development.
Fervo went public in May in an upsized IPO that raised $1.9 billion. Founded in 2017, it brings drilling techniques and technologies from the oil and gas sector to the development of new geothermal resources. As a startup, the company raised more than $1.3 billion from investors including Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Congruent Ventures and Capricorn Investment Group.