A Deep Dive Into Geothermal Energy Resources With New Drilling Technology

The energy company Quaise, a geothermal drilling initiative, is trying to break new ground by taking new investments. Quaise Energy exited the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center in 2018, raising $63 million in investment to date.

Quaise Energy’s plan is to exploit deep geothermal with millimeter-wave drilling systems that can reach depths of 10-20 km. At these depths, geothermal energy is intense, almost unlimited, and available all over the planet.

Geothermal resource and energy

Geothermal resource, briefly, is ground heat, and it is hot water, steam and gases containing chemicals, formed by the heat accumulated in various depths of the earth’s crust. Geothermal energy, on the other hand, includes any direct or indirect benefit from geothermal resources.

Geothermal energy is a new, renewable, sustainable, inexhaustible, cheap, reliable, environmentally friendly, domestic and green energy type.

Geothermal reservoirs, formed by rain, snow, sea and magmatic waters feeding the underground porous and cracked rock masses, maintain their renewable and sustainable features as long as the underground and reinjection conditions continue. They are not affected by short-term atmospheric conditions.

Solar and wind power are increasingly dominating the green energy market. Although geothermal energy is an unlimited resource, there are very few places where hot rocks suitable for extracting energy are located near the surface.

Quaise

The gyrotron-powered drilling platform aims to vaporize wells from rock, providing access to deep geothermal heat without complex downhole equipment.

Building on their groundbreaking fusion research and well-established drilling applications, they develop a radical new approach to ultra-deep drilling. First, conventional rotary drilling is used to reach the bedrock, then high-powered millimeter waves are used to reach unprecedented depths.

“The rapid transition to clean energy is one of the biggest challenges facing humanity,” said Arunas Chesonis, Managing Partner of investment fund provider Safar Partners.

Much more power with fewer resources

“Geothermal energy can provide much more power using fewer resources. We have to approach the clean energy transition from both these perspectives. Quaise’s solution makes us optimistic for a future where clean, renewable energy will secure the future of our planet”.

The company will use the funds it receives to develop products, and by 2024 it will build field-installable drilling rigs to use this new drilling technology on site. Even if everything goes well, it aims to have a working system that produces power by 2026.

What technology by Quaise Energy do

“This funding round brings us even closer to delivering clean, renewable baseload energy,” said Carlos Araque, CEO of Quaise Energy. “Our technology enables us to access energy anywhere in the world on a much larger scale than wind and solar, enabling future generations to thrive in a world powered by an abundance of clean energy”.

“We need massive amounts of carbon-neutral energy in the coming decades,” said Mark Cupta, Managing Director of Prelude Ventures, a funder.

Quaise Energy is one of the most resource-efficient and nearly infinitely scalable solutions to power our planet.