Google’s Billion Dollar Gamble: You Won't Believe What it is! 

Go to www.eightsleep.com/ricky or code 'RICKY' for $200 off!

My brother worked at the Geysers Geothermal Power plant in northern California. At the time it was the largest geothermal plant in the world. He said keeping the equipment running was a major challenge because the steam contained a lot of sulphur. The sulphur combined with water created Sulphuric Acid which ate away the equipment. When he took me on a tour of the plant, I saw a huge mountain of sulphur on the ground.

My father was a chemist in the automotive paint business. He worked for a small business and developed the first water based metallic automotive paint. Everyone thought it was impossible. Once he had it, his competitors all said they would have theirs within 6 months to a year. He explained to me that once something is proven possible it becomes easier because then others know they are not wasting their time with trial and error. The invention of the blue diode was the same, impossible until it wasn't. Great episode.

There is a version of these horizontal geothermal wells that dispenses with the fracking, and instead uses a closed system. The pipes are sealed, so the water pumped in is exactly the same as the water pumped out, and as a result none of the water is lost, and no nasty minerals are extracted that can corrode the pipes, pumps, and heat exchangers. For the same flow rate, less heat is extracted, but the reduced cost of maintaining the system and no loss of water underground more than makes up for it. Hopefully Google will try a system like this next.

They actually dropped the "don't be evil" mantra. Like it was worth anything anyway.

Google - 2000: "Don't be evil" Google - 2010: "Our policy has changed."

Canadian company Eavor does the same thing without the fracking. Nice to see this underground tech emerging.

Google actually removed the "don't be evil" thing.

I'm from east of France, where we have some of the first enhanced-geothermal well... that had to be stopped because it triggered earthquakes. Turned out that fracking in a seismic active zone was a bad idea, whou could have thought ?...

I think it was reported on Disruptive Investing RU-vid channel of a company doing similar, but they drilled 2 wells and did between well directional drilling to connect the two main wells with several 'cross connects' underground without fracking. They put a cement liner on the ENTIRE well 'matrix' then pump water into the 'injection' well till it starts coming out the 'production wells', and then the water goes through a heat exchanger, but all the fluid gets re-pumped into the injection well. After a few 'circuits' or cycles through they can bypass the pump and it basically pumps itself. Their wells are also not super deep and they have a pilot plant running in west Texas if I remember right. ... Best part, no fracking and no continual loss of 'fluid'. ... Just thought you might like to hear about it.

Fracking... it's litterally groundbreaking ;)

I’ve seen the geothermal power plant in Iceland. Of course their access to hot steam is far easier than most locations around globe

Suprised you didn’t mention Eavor’s “closed-loop” alternative to fracking for geothermal energy. It also uses horizontal drilling for hot water, but avoids the water loss and resulting risks of destabilizing surface structures and causing earthquakes.

Google out here building the most expensive Rube Goldberg machine. God forbid we make nuclear power plants...

“Ground breaking” 😂 I see what you ďid there

If you look at current information, the fracking industry uses ingredients that are typically categorized as food products in order to avoid any of the toxicity risks. Toxic chemicals have been out of favor in the IS for some time.

Damn, what a great video! Talk about a bad ass deep dive!!

If they are pumping that much extra water into the injection well, it means the local aquifer will rise, they'll probably dig some other standard wells in the area around the plant to pull out water and monitor the static water level. Also, I'm surprised you didn't mention that the plant was just a few miles away from the Tesla giga factory. 😂

Just to put the water usage into perspective, 14 acres of California almonds use 17M liters of water. Last year they grew 1.63 million acres.

Great video Ricky! As a Nevada resident, it warms my heart to see this! The disappearing water doesn't surprise me, after all our entire state is desert.

Great episode Ricky! Studied geothermal as part of my alternative energy course work back in the 80's and checked out the geothermal plant im Mammoth when I lived there. Always saw it as an underutilized technology.

Ricki, some of the information on fracking is out of date. The fracking industries have either stopped using the most toxic chemicals or rapidly moving away from them. In addition, water use is no longer a major concern since they now use brackish ground water using extracted from the area. Turns out one of the major additives used in traditional fracking is salt. By using this brackish ground water, they don't have to use fresh water with all of it's complications such as algae and other organic contamination they can inject the used brackish water back where it came from.

Fracking now has a system in place 'to reuse the chemicals by filtration 'so its some what cleaner then before.

I wonder how quickly they would abandon this

Geothermal, seawater and desalination all in 1 go.

11:09 - Since the Philippines is in the Pacific Ring of Fire, it has geothermal potential. Actually, it has a handful of geothermal power plants in operation: 1. Mak-Ban (Makiling-Banahaw) 2. Tiwi 3. Bac-Man (Bacon-Manito) 4. Panlipinon 5. Malitbog

Another "level" is to place your servers near a company that needs low temperature (pre) heating of some input (water perhaps). Thus cool water heated by the servers is supplied to the neighbour pre-heated thus saving the energy. The user pays the server co. so many cents per kWh of heat but at a rate less than the cost of natural gas.

The wind... isn't always blowing? I live in Oklahoma, if the wind stops, i get seriously nervous. They should just move here

Brilliant vlog. I appreciate the way that you answer questions that we should have asked, before delivering the core message. I look forward to enjoying several of your gifts.

Ricky congrats! Ive been following you since the beginning. You really stepped up your game and your reports are top notch. Unique, in depth and interesting. Talking about geothermal I witnesed two stages of project Miravalle in Costa Rica atnthenslopes of a vulcano. The problem was the minerals that deposited quickly on the pipes clogging the system

No question directional boring geothermal is a game changer. I'm pulling for the company (name escapes me) that is using the same technology, minus the fracking, and uses a closed loop system. Geothermal is the perfect answer for data centers, and with a constant load, there's no need for any power source other than geothermal.

Love your channel. Thank you for explaining complex processes so someone like myself can understand it. 🙏

About time! This only gets better from here.

Thanks for another great article Ricky Please check out the company Eavor and their eavor-loop geothermal system. They have developed a closed system much like an underground radiator which has little or no fluid loss to the rock also they claim far lower circulation energy as the system is partially powered by thermal cycle I would love to see your evaluation of their process

Australia has had at least 47 geothermal power plant projects, all have now been abandoned as being uneconomic unfortunately, including the Cooper basin one, you showed on the graphs. Hopefully Google is successful long term - maybe they aren't as constrained by economics.

Checking out your ad. I loved my water bed in hot and cold weather, but it was unmovable. Thanks for showing this product.

Excellent video, thanks for digging deep.

In germany several city's used to have geothermal and had severe problems to buildings just started to falling apart. It makes unstable ground and it starts to move and devastate roads and houses

Probably going to cancel it like every other project.

Thanks for the invaluable coverage of this topic.

One solution for the difficulties for horizontal drilling is to make a "V" drilling, that will allow use simpler equipaments and processes.letting two plants far from each one.

AI and supercomputing takes massively amounts of energy!

Thanks for the video, this is a great project. But reliance upon a large, centralized grid causes all the "peaking" problems. If every conceivable rooftop had solar panels and all those buildings had batteries suitable for their own peak needs, the grid would only be backup. A decentralized grid and storage system would also be strategically much more durable, making this a national defense priority that is being ignored at our peril.

This was a very good video! Clarifying the projects and assumptions that are used for click-bait PowerPoint. Thank you!!

Great video. Thanks for making them.

The oil industry's fracking fluid is so toxic they refuse to disclose what it's made from. Hopefully this project will be transparent on all of its methods and ingredients.

I'm excited to see Geothermal used more. It makes a lot of sense. It would be cool if Google was able to find a use for the waste heat from their servers as well. Thanks for this story!

Thanks for sharing your videos and updates on various technologies. Always been a big fan of geothermal energy. Last I heard test sights were being shutdown because of their ability to make earth quakes. This was long before fracking was even on the radar. Curious that that is still an issue over 30 years later. They really need to stop trying to make a short cut to getting the heat out of the ground from above. IE they need to put boots on the ground where they are needed even if it’s under ground in high temperature dry rock. They need to develop a functional closed loop system for energy production. Future video idea, possibly make a video about the efforts that Eric Sorensen has put into saving thorium liquid salt reactors from the dust bin of the past. Also the various benefits that they could provide. He has several vary long and dry informative videos that are very hard to watch but chocked full of details that are easy to overlook with each one individually being a game changer. Basically make a summary of his videos simplified and highlighted to show the how, why’s, and benefits simplified to open them up to the general public. Having had over 30 years in the power industry it took me several views of each of his long format videos to pick out as many benefits as I did and almost every one would be a game changer if it could be transferred to our current fleet of steam powered generators independent of prime mover. One of the biggest advantages was the ability of the reactor to be self regulated due to the science behind its design. It only makes more energy when you withdraw more energy. Stop taking power out it idles itself back to a steady state standby. As a power system operator that one is amazing. The fact that it is self controlled is probably the scariest part of its design. There are very few control inputs because they simply are unnecessary and would likely mess it up thru operator input. It’s truly a walk away safe design.

That was very interesting, thanks for sharing it

Awesome job. Amazing research especially on what makes this power plant different (and better) than other gethermal/enhanced geothermal projects. Thank you for your hard work!

Google needs to call Tesla for some large XL Battery Storage setups to combine with their solar and wind

Another Two Bit video. 😁 Love your videos. Liked and Shared.

I'm just happy of hearing this.

Great content! Thanks. I didn’t know about this. The irony is how evil Google has behaved.

Thanks, this is fascinating! And keep the beard growing. I have long believed that most men shave the wrong part of their heads!

Always enjoyable thanks

Great story! Liked and subscribed. So, where is the extra water going? This HAS to be figured out before permits are issued.

great video

Why use an open system instead of a closed one, no infiltrations of water into the ground (with unknown result)?

Pretty wild. Good stuff. Future is bright

its nice to see unbiased investigations like this, good shit man

If I remember correctly, it's largely the waste water disposal from fracking that has been linked to earthquakes. The USGS reported that more waste water was put into the wells then when fracking was in progress, which they believe is the big reason for increased earthquakes. TLDR, no waste water=far, far fewer quakes.

Literally ground breaking tech.. Lol

The elephant is not fracking, it is cost. Employing fracking to extract profitable hydrocarbons is a net profit, but drilling and fracking for hot water is a much harder business case. Enhanced geothermal today often tries to extract lithium etc to create another revenue stream. Remember: geothermal electricity competes with electricity produced more cheaply by solar, hydro, or wind. Price is often (not always) the deciding factor.

Wow this channel has taken off recently!! Congratulations!

Hydro fracking is also used in low production water wells, to open up the granite cracks so that the water can flow more efficiently/freely from the aquifer.

Danger. It's not an infinite source. It cools the earth's core, which at some point stops spinning and the protective atmosphere gets stripped away like Mars.

NOT clickbait I agree. VERY interesting subject that I hope expands all over the USA!!!!

Ricky, great research , analysis and presentation. We need that base generation of renewable and this controlled power source seems to do just that. Fascinating, Eamon

I really like your deep dive into the tradeoffs. I think that putting water underground is not as much as a problem at it seems. It you pair the geothermal plant with aquifer drains like into agriculture, then you could get out that excess water that is going elsewhere. You could even, I don't know, drill a bigger injection well, (twice the size) and a second extraction well down in order to get more of the water in percentage. Something like that.

The water use by the pilot plant isn't that great in the scheme of things if its located on a large lot let say tens of acres then 17 million gallons could be collected during a good rain storm if the drainage is managed properly. The biggest challenge is constructing a cistern that would hold that much water.

2:45 - - chart - - 2:53 - - PPAs 4:06 - - data world-wide 12:33 - fervo 14:35 - - server rooms + pwr data cntr w 100% carbon-free energy

I don't watch a lot your of videos but I sure do love this one

Sounds like battery storage is the better way to go.

I love your channel however your rant on fracking is ill informed and not true. I've worked in energy for 12 years now mostly in exploration and completion, I am a pipe welder. I would like to invite you at anytime for a tour of any fracking site I work on and show you how safe and amazing it is. Thanks

Very informative. Thanks.

I'm CERTAIN I've seen other Geo plants working with horizontal drilling recently. In the one I'm thinking of they drill two sets of wells that eventually connect at the end point. Pump down one well and back up the other. So similar to this but without the fracking risk.

I'm so happy I made productive decisions about my finances that changed my life forever,hoping to retire next year.. Investment should always be on any creative man's heart for success in life

The footage clearly shows a piston reciprocating piston device. It is not a "Turbine." In 1973 ,exploring New Zealand, I visited a thermal power plant. Bores brought up superheated water which was put though heat exchangers, to produce steam, which could then be utilized to drive turbines. The negative aspect of this was that minerals in the steam deposited mineral in the piping, eventually closing the diameter of the bore and requiring periodic drilling to create a new passage to the surface. Free steam, at a drilling cost, was, as it is said, :Fruit on the sideboard.

Great info ... thank you.

Still doesn’t change the rather obvious point that fracking hugely increases the risk of earthquakes.

I've been rooting for (and unsuccessfully trying to both contribute to and invest in) geothermal power for many years. I've had many of the same questions you did. Thank you for doing all that research! It's very helpful.

My Aunt is a member of the sub 4 club. Her first attempt at the Ironman triathalon she placed second for women. She went to school learning about the mind, and used what she learned to put her brain in the right place to do well. Now she teaches olympians to do what she did. I remember running across the golden gate bridge with her, and learning about pacing from her at a young age.

Can use 1 large pipe with internal pipe for hot water up and external for cold water down!

This sounds really good. I would be more on board if the fracking industry could answer the seismic issues that are just a part of the process. Oklahoma is a perfect example of the effects of fracking.

Thanks for this episode, makes me happy that I brought google at IPO and am holding long. Stock doing well and will do even better with innovations like this going forward.

Good one! Thanks!

I instantly drew the same conclusion about geothermal fracking. It's what is done to the water supply that is the major problem, that is specifically due to toxic chemicals that apply only to fossil fuel extraction, so unless they are injecting the same or other toxic chemicals into the ground for geothermal purposes that I am unaware of, the biggest fracking concern doesn't apply. The geologic stability concern still applies, and that still needs to be talked about. One might expect that to be a deal breaker in California, a state that already has a problem with geologic instability, but on the other hand, the existing potential for earthquakes also means that California is perhaps the best place to accept this risk because their infrastructure is already engineered to accommodate it. The last issue, as you mentioned, is water usage, and in some places that is a huge concern now, and will likely be a big concern in more places in the future. Considering the long-standing and worsening water supply problem over much of the US southwest, that seems like it might make the idea a nonstarter where many of Alphabet's operations are based, unless they can figure out a way to offset their water consumption. This would effectively convert Google's conservation problem from carbon zero to water zero. Fascinating video! Thanks for posting it!

The power plant I work at uses reclaimed city water for cooling water (no river/lake available and man-made reservoirs for storage). I wonder if Fervo could position themselves both near a city for reclaimed water use and near an appropriate site. (We have to clean the water another time due to the remaining particulate in the water and the water has a lot of Mg/Ca in it that may not matter to the turbine side?)

I think geothermal is a great concept. In the state of NV extra water is not available. When looking for the location of Project Red I also found another plant is being constructed in Southwestern UT. Another state that is experiencing water shortages in the Southern part of the state. Probably a concern that is not a big concern.

Lovey our VLOG. My reading says that this geothermal energy can be used to run existing power plants from Coal and Natural gas because it is steam that runs the turbines and geothermal creates steam. I would love your thoughts on converting existing powerplants for saving on the transition.

Excellent exposition Ricky - you're helping Humanity see that it really does have the means of steering away from self-destruction.

Good take on this topic. My only concern is water!!! And the fact that others will most likely take shortcuts involving less than desirable materials to produce the same effect.

what about drilling additional collection wells around the area to extract ground water for the system? reclaim it somehow? use the power from the plant to desalinate to supplement?

Nice to have a company willing to risk $10 million in case something works.

I bicycle by the new plant in Nevada, its amazing how much land they have moved around in the valley. It is basically in the middle of nowhere or somewhere. Its not to far away from Tesla. There is another geothermal plant in yerington, NV which is about 25 miles from google down USA pkwy..

They should combine this with a gravity battery using stored water. This would eliminate the need for any other power production and they need water storage as it is.

Great video! I just subbed.

Eavor have a geothermal energy plant in Germany, no fracking, same water circulates throught 12 horizontal connections sealed with cement, the Eavor loop. Quaze energy again no fracking, and same volume of convection water ,uses microwaves to vapourise the rock which lines the hole walls with glass, and can drill horizontal and/or deeper than steel, hence hotter temperatures enough to power coal fired plants turbines instead of fossil fuel.

from what i understand Nesjavallavirkjun here in Iceland does the same thing kind of, they already have the hot water so they just have a return hole dont need to pump fresh water down, basicly water comes up as steam goes through all the machines and turbines and shits then gets pumped back down to not deplete the reservoir or what ever youd call it