Vulcan bags $108M to make geothermal cost competitive with coal, gas

Vulcan Power, a major developer of geothermal energy sources in the American west, has just landed $108 million in equity from an affiliate of Denham Capital. The company, which already has permits to use 170,000 acres in Arizona, Oregon, California and Nevada, will apply the money generate 300 megawatts of energy — enough to power 300,000 homes at peak output.

What makes Vulcan special? It already has several power purchase agreements in the pipeline with big name utilities like Nevada Power Company and SoCal Edison.

The company is also tackling a challenging feat: the transmission of energy from Northern Nevada across the Sierra Nevada mountain range to California. So far, Vulcan is still working on it, but the necessary infrastructure is proving expensive. The golden state’s argument for bringing in out-of-state power is that it will be cheaper than investing in its own plants. Vulcan says that its plan fits neatly into this agenda, with Richard Rodgers, formerly of the Bank of America, claiming that generating 1,000 megawatts of geothermal would be so cost effective that it would justify $4 billion in grid upgrades to make it happen. The company could be one of a handful to prove that geothermal is economically feasible, if it succeeds.

The U.S. Department of Energy still isn’t super enthusiastic about geothermal — largely because it is geographically dependent and the department would rather fund solar and wind development. Still, it estimates that about 15 percent of the planet could eventually be powered by geothermal sources. In the U.S., geothermal already provides 3,150 megawatts of power, the operational equivalent of two nuclear reactors. In the next several years, this figure will probably top 10 gigawatts (enough to power 10 million homes across the country). Companies like Vulcan have the potential to make the technology more efficient even as they expand their operations.

Geothermal’s major advantage: incredibly low greenhouse gas emissions. Its biggest hurdle: cost. Constructing a geothermal plant — including the extensive drilling and equipment to pump water deep enough to convert it to steam — is an incredibly capital intensive process. On the upside, these installations typically require little maintenance, and make energy available around the clock, unlike intermittent wind farms and solar arrays. Wind turbines operate at a third of their capacity on average, whereas geothermal systems average 72 percent capacity. Vulcan goes further and claims a 95 percent capacity factor. This means that if the most power that could be wrung out of a plant was 100 MW, it would routinely operate at 95 MW. Wind farms of the same theoretic capacity only produce 33 MW on a regular basis.

If the company does everything it says — and delivers its technology at a low cost — it could very well make geothermal energy cost competitive with coal and natural gas. Vulcan previously received a $35 million principal investment from Merrill Lynch in May 2007.

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