Can New Drill Tech Unleash the Potential of Geothermal Energy? (GigaOm)
The next generation of geothermal energy technology — called enhanced or engineered geothermal, or EGS for short — has long been just out of reach in a commercial sense. Why? Because it’s just been too expensive mostly due to the high cost of drilling new enhanced geothermal wells deep down into hard hot rocks over 10,000 feet below the earth’s surface.
But according to next-gen geothermal startup AltaRock, a new type of drilling technology could help solve this problem of high cost drilling. AltaRock CEO Aaron Mandell tells me that the company has entered into a partnership, and created a joint venture, with a company called ON Energy, which is the U.S. supplier of Korean drilling company Hanjin D&B. AltaRock and ON Energy plan to use a new type of “hammer” drilling tech that could help commercialize enhanced geothermal energy.
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