Khosla-powered Mazama taps super-hot rocks in race to provide 24/7 power

With grids under pressure from rising demand from data centers and electric vehicles, geothermal startups are racing to unlock the energy hidden deep within the Earth. Now, a startup has developed the world’s hottest geothermal well — one that contains enough energy to power thousands of homes.

Mazama Energy said today that it drilled a well in Oregon that reached a temperature of 629 degrees F (331 degrees C) at the bottom of the well. Vinod Khosla, whose company Khosla Ventures incubated the company, mentioned this important milestone on stage today at TechCrunch Disrupt.

“This one site can produce 5 gigawatts of power,” Khosla said.

The potential in other locations could be greater. “It’s not tens of megawatts, as usual [with] Geothermal wells. You could do gigawatt scale and, frankly, produce 100 gigawatts or more — more than AI is expected to use in the near term, just from very hot geothermal energy.

The company hopes to eventually drill into hotter rock, up to 750 degrees Fahrenheit (400 degrees Celsius), to be able to generate at least 25 megawatts of electricity from a single well. That would be about two to three times more power per well than what competitors generate today.

Geothermal energy has been around for decades, but most power plants exploit shallow resources that occur when things like hot springs bring heat from the Earth’s mantle near the surface. Developers of improved geothermal energy drill deeper wells and have access to greater and more consistent heat. This technology promises to make geothermal energy more productive and available in more places.

Because it relies on the Earth’s heat, enhanced geothermal energy can provide electricity 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. That’s why companies like Google have signed deals to build geothermal data centers.

Enhanced geothermal energy has the potential to meet large portions of existing and new energy demand in the United States, and wells drilled in the Great Basin region centered on Nevada could supply 10% of the nation’s current demand, according to the USGS.

Tapping deep rocks can unlock more energy using fewer resources. By injecting water into hotter wells, the amount of energy per well can increase dramatically. It should be able to use 75% less water than current geothermal systems, Mazama said.

“At 450˚ [Celsius]you get 10 times more energy per well than you do at 200°C. guess what? “You also get a dramatically lower cost, competitive cost — without worrying about carbon emissions — for natural gas,” Khosla said.