Southern California Edison and geothermal energy company Fervo Energy announced Tuesday that they have executed two 15-year power purchase agreements for a total of 320 MW.
SCE will purchase the power from the 400-MW Cape Station project that Fervo is constructing in Utah, the latter said. Fervo expects the initial 70-MW phase of the project to be operational by 2026, with the next phase coming online by 2028.
The deal is the largest-ever geothermal PPA, Fervo said, and the energy provided could power the equivalent of 350,000 homes across Southern California.
“Enhanced geothermal systems complement our abundant wind and solar resources by providing critical base load when those sources are limited,” said California Energy Commission Chair David Hochschild. “This is key to ensuring reliability as we continue to transition away from fossil fuels.”
Fervo said that the California Public Utilities Commission’s 2021 mid-term reliability mandate for utilities to procure 1,000 MW of “non-weather-dependent, non-battery, zero-emission energy” had “catalyzed demand for geothermal, which provides firm, carbon-free power, filling gaps left by weather-dependent renewables like solar and wind.”
Fervo announced last July that it had achieved a breakthrough in geothermal technology by adopting fracking techniques developed by the oil and gas industry to extract geothermal energy.
At the time, the company said the results of its experimental Project Red in northern Nevada resulted in the most productive enhanced geothermal system ever built in terms of flow rate and its 3.5-MW electric power equivalent.
In its Tuesday release, Fervo said that it had “de-risked a scalable approach to geothermal development,” and February results from the technique’s use at Cape Station show “faster drilling times and an overall reduction in cost.”
“These positive results support continued commercialization and a readiness for large-scale agreements like this,” the company said.
