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Fervo Energy Announces 320 MW Power Purchase Agreements with Southern California Edison
Fervo Energy, the leader in next-generation geothermal energy, announced the execution of two power purchase agreements (PPAs) totaling 320 MW with Southern California Edison (SCE), one of the nation’s largest utilities. The 15-year agreements for 24/7 carbon-free geothermal energy will provide reliable, clean, and affordable power for the equivalent of 350,000 homes across Southern California and support SCE’s vision to help California transition to a cleaner energy future.
SCE will purchase the power from Fervo Energy’s 400 MW Cape Station project currently under construction in southwest Utah. The first 70 MW phase of the project is expected to be operational by 2026 and the second phase will be operational by 2028.
California’s AI-Powered Wildfire Prevention Efforts Contend With Data Challenge
Southern California Edison, San Diego Gas & Electric Co. and PG&E Corp. say they see promise in AI algorithms that use images captured by drones and other means to detect anomalies in infrastructure that could lead to wildfires. However, they say it will likely take years to gather enough data to deploy the algorithms at scale across their infrastructure, where they would augment ongoing manual inspections.
San Diego Gas & Electric said it has 75 working models designed to detect specific conditions or damages on company assets or third-party equipment. Gabe Mika, senior group product manager, said each is trained on anywhere from 100 to 5,000 images. SDG&E has leveraged several of Amazon Web Services’ machine-learning and computer vision tools to help build the models, the company said.