A startup says it has found a hidden source of geothermal energy

Geothermal startup He said Thursday that he has struck gold in Nevada — figuratively speaking. Zanskar, which uses artificial intelligence to find geothermal resources hidden deep underground, says it has identified a new commercially viable site for a potential power plant. The company claims that this discovery is the first of its kind made by the industry in decades.

This discovery is the culmination of years of research into how to find these resources, and indicates the growing promise of geothermal energy.

“When we started this company, I think the most common message we heard was that geothermal was dead, it was bare bones history, a graveyard of many failures,” says Karl Hoyland, co-founder of Zanskar. “To get to this point, with these new tools and these new capabilities, that you can systematically find these sites and systematically take them out — we think this is the first large-scale indication that the tide has turned.”

In theory, geothermal energy is one of the simplest ways to generate renewable energy. Underground hot water tanks, heated by the Earth’s core, produce steam that can then be used to drive turbines on the surface, requiring no excessive mining or complex fuel conversions. Geothermal resources are particularly accessible in areas where tectonic plates meet and the Earth’s crust is thinner, making the western United States a great candidate for power plants. The world’s largest geothermal field, in California, was built on the site of hot springs that humans have used for thousands of years; The first power plant was built there in the early 1920s.

But a big part of the geothermal puzzle is finding these resources. It is rare to find hot springs or roof vents that lead to a productive place to set up a power plant. Most geothermal systems hot enough to produce electricity are located deep within the Earth, with no evidence on the surface. These are known as hidden or blind systems, and locating them is surprisingly challenging. As a result, many geothermal power plants are built on systems found by chance, while drilling agricultural or mineral wells or exploring for oil and gas.

“It’s a needle and haystack problem,” says Joel Edwards, Zanskar’s other co-founder. “A very small percentage of the land you’ll be looking at will have a geothermal system associated with it.”

In the 1970s, during the oil crisis, the federal government decided to try to increase U.S. geothermal energy production. As part of this effort, they drew a grid in Nevada to try to systematically drill for blind systems.