From groundbreaking to commercial operations, the first block at Cape Station took just 23 months to complete. 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 company aims to complete future blocks in as little as 18 months as it refines its drilling and construction processes. The plant is designed to reach 100 megawatts of capacity, and the entire site in Beaver County, Utah, has the potential to generate up to 4 gigawatts, Fervo previously told TechCrunch.
Enhanced geothermal drilling targets hotter rock deeper underground, unlike traditional geothermal that relies on shallow heat sources. Fervo adapts drilling techniques from the oil and gas industry to tap these deeper resources, opening up geographic areas previously unsuitable for geothermal power.
The speed and phased nature of geothermal development have drawn interest from large electricity buyers. Google, Southern California Edison, and others have committed to buying power from Cape Station. Data center operators, facing severe power shortages, are particularly attracted to geothermal because it can be developed in phases similar to how data centers are built, allowing them to bring capacity online as demand grows.
Fervo went public in May in an upsized initial public offering that raised $1.9 billion. Founded in 2017, the startup raised more than $1.3 billion from investors including Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Congruent Ventures, and Capricorn Investment Group before its listing.