Meta Strikes Geothermal Energy Deal To Power US Data Centers (reuters.com) 26
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Facebook owner Meta struck a deal to buy geothermal power from Sage Geosystems to supply its U.S. data centers, it said on Monday, as it races to build out the infrastructure to support its massive investments in energy-hungry artificial intelligence. The first phase of the 150-megawatt project should be operational by 2027 and "significantly" expand the use of geothermal power in the United States, the social media company said. The location has yet to be determined, but the companies said it will be east of the Rocky Mountains. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. [...]
Sage, which is based in Houston, is a four-year-old startup developing next-generation technology that it says can be deployed in more locations than traditional geothermal, which requires naturally occurring underground reservoirs of hot water and accounts for 0.4% of U.S. power generation. The company is backed by oil and gas firms Chesapeake Energy and Nabors Industries and venture capital firms Virya and Helium-3 Ventures. The project for Meta would be Sage's largest to date by far. The company said it first validated the technology in the field just two years ago. A Meta spokesperson told Reuters the company expected the Sage Geosystems energy to feed the power grid, rather than directly supplying any specific data center.
Sage, which is based in Houston, is a four-year-old startup developing next-generation technology that it says can be deployed in more locations than traditional geothermal, which requires naturally occurring underground reservoirs of hot water and accounts for 0.4% of U.S. power generation. The company is backed by oil and gas firms Chesapeake Energy and Nabors Industries and venture capital firms Virya and Helium-3 Ventures. The project for Meta would be Sage's largest to date by far. The company said it first validated the technology in the field just two years ago. A Meta spokesperson told Reuters the company expected the Sage Geosystems energy to feed the power grid, rather than directly supplying any specific data center.
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And we have legions of Americans who claim the human induced climate change causing the monstrous fires is a hoax.
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If Zuck wanted to "right the ship," Meta could invest in green tech that exists right now, like solar + pumped hydro, or nuclear. Giving money to a vaporware startup that is funded by fossil fuel companies doesn't sound like it will stop a single gram of CO2 being emitted, and is either a tax writeoff, greenwashing, or both.
I've been watching geothermal for about three decades. In that time, photovoltaics have gone from "impractically expensive" ubiquitous." Geothermal is still just something that works gre
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It's worth investing in new types of geothermal, using some of the technology developed for fracking. Nuclear is dying and probably isn't going to recover, plus it takes so long to develop that even if you get lucky and it works out, geothermal is still lower risk and faster.
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Geothermal has far more potential than any of those old technologies. 1% of the earth's geothermal could power all of humanities energy needs for 1000 years. Unlike solar or wind, geothermal is not dependent on the weather, it is available 24/7.
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Having read about what I believe these folks are attempting, they will drill 12,000 feet to where the rock is hot enough to boil water. Do the "fracking" maneuver to open up much surface area at that depth to handle more water -> steam, and turn turbines like normal power generation.
Such a strategy has a lot of advantages, such as being able to be put absolutely anywhere, so if you want a terawatt of energy production for Chicago, there seems to be no really good reason that you couldn't drill in downt
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Untrue. I've measured (you know ; drill well ; lower thermometer ; tabulate results ; write 2kg report ; collect pay check) temperatures in wells all over the world, and around your "12000ft" (3.9km) depth below sediment surface (yes ; that qualifer matters) and measured bottom hole temperatures ranging from a little below 100 "& deg ;" (stupid Slashcode, not accepting standard HTML entities) to over 140 "& deg
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1% of the earth's geothermal could power all of humanities energy needs for 1000 years.
If the next 1000 years maintain the same energy requirements that exist today, maybe. But we all know, especially those in IT know, what happens when you give developers extra resources: They will find a way to use them.
Making matters worse, geothermal power is worse than fossil fuels. Unlike fossil fuels, which are "renewable" but have a multi million year production time and require a lot of dead bio-matter, "renewing" geothermal power requires bombarding the planet with enough mass and residual energy
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If Zuck wanted to "right the ship," Meta could invest in green tech that exists right now, like solar + pumped hydro, or nuclear.
They claim that they do [atmeta.com]. You always have to beware of double counting and know that usage is fungible so that if they drive peaks at bad times that can cause fossil fuel usage, but if their claims are true then that's a big part of what needs to be done.
I have seen dozens of "hot dry rocks" (the actual phrase from the 1990s) come and go.
They claim they "validated the technology in the field just two years ago". What was wrong with that validation?
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but making a ton of pollution to produce the contraptions.
Yes and as well all know once we purchase a car it sits in a garage never being driven or refueled so the emissions to manufacture the vehichle are all we should care about.
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Much of the argument comes down to, "pollution generated at manufacture, or from electricity, which might be from a coal power plant".
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Yup and that argument is 100% silly goosery because the entire purpose of cars is to be driven so manufacture emissions cannot be the only metric unless the person is trying to be dishonest.
And even then with a theoretical 100% coal grid i believe it just moves the line of how many miles drivern until the EV has less lifetime emissions over a comparable ICE vehichle, when i have looked this up with a US average mixed grid it's like ~40k miles and an all-coal grid would be closer to 80k miles which still mea
Very little IT-data benefits human life. (Score:3)
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Certainly something has improved billions of times over, but you'd have to be the sort of person who mentions seasons as verbs to see it. "I summered in Stad back in '22 with Tish and Todd, ah ha!"
First phase... (Score:1)
So in three years, they will have the first phase rolled out. Is that 10 or 15 kW? 300 kW? Just window dressing.
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Meta Energy (Score:2)
I wonder if Meta, will end up spinning out a new company or subsidiary to run an energy company to provide for its energy requirements, and possibly sell back or provide power for its surrounding localities...
"The location has yet to be determined" (Score:3)
Location is pretty much everything in geothermal energy. If they haven't even picked a location, this isn't a project, it isn't even a plan for a project. This is a wish-list for a project.
Re:"The location has yet to be determined" (Score:4, Insightful)
Right, but Meta no doubt gets "Carbon credits" for investing/contracting in the technology. Those are good regardless of whether it actually works because they're front-loaded.
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Yep - exactly the same point I was intending to make. And with over 30 years experience in drilling (I remember working on Nabors rigs, before they sold their North Sea operations to ... KCA, I think it was, before their merger with Deutag) , I certainly agree with the "Location is pretty much everything". Which also means that the power, wherever it is generated, is
its all about scale (Score:2)
One-hundred and fifty megawatts is roughly enough electricity to power 38,000 homes.
Wow sounds like a lot doesn't it. That is 5-7 data centers, not even a single region for a large owner like META
I Thought Meta Had (Score:2)
cut a deal with some fusion or matter/antimatter energy company for their AI power?