Ormat Turns to Geothermal Power to Meet AI Data Center Demand

For decades, Ormat Technologies has built geothermal power plants in locations with underground reservoirs of high-pressure water or steam, including areas around the Pacific “Ring of Fire” stretching from Asia to the Americas.

Ormat Technologies is pursuing enhanced geothermal systems as a potential source of reliable, low-carbon electricity for AI data centers. [Photo: Ormat Technologies]

The strategy has made Ormat one of the world's largest geothermal power operators, Jordan Blum reported for Fortune Tech.

Now, Ormat hopes to expand significantly as the artificial intelligence data center boom drives demand for reliable electricity.

The company is looking to develop baseload, low-carbon power plants across the Western United States by combining conventional geothermal technology with advances in drilling.

The approach is known as enhanced geothermal systems (EGS), which use techniques developed in the oil and gas industry to access heat in underground rock formations that lack the natural reservoirs required by conventional geothermal plants.

The goal is to make geothermal power viable in more locations by drilling deeper into hotter underground formations and creating engineered reservoirs through which fluids can circulate and extract heat.