Quaise Energy has moved out of the lab and into the field with the first demonstration of its novel drilling technique on a full-scale oil rig just outside of Houston, Texas.
The company, formed seven years ago, is on track to prove that clean, renewable geothermal energy could power the world.
Carlos Araque, CEO of Quaise and a Co-Founder, commented: “Geothermal energy is available everywhere on massive scales. If you take all fossil, all nuclear, and all other forms of renewable energy combined, they are not even a millionth of a millionth of the thermal stores of energy below the Earth’s surface. It’s mind-boggling, and to get it, we only have to go down 2 – 12 miles. That’s how close we are to infinite clean energy no matter where you are in the world.”
Geothermal energy – the heat beneath our feet – has been around for a long time, but it barely contributes to today’s energy mix. Araque noted: “That’s because the true geothermal resource, the one that matters, is not very accessible. Getting to it is beyond the economic reach of the conventional tool set of oil and gas.”
The mother lode of geothermal energy is some 2 – 12 miles beneath the Earth’s surface where the rock is so hot that if water could be pumped to the area it would become supercritical, a steam-like phase that most people are not familiar with (familiar phases are liquid water, ice, and the vapour that makes clouds). Supercritical water, in turn, can carry some 5 – 10 times more energy than regular hot water, making it an extremely efficient energy source if it could be pumped above ground to turbines that could convert it into electricity.
Today, we cannot access those resources, except in places like Iceland where they are relatively close to the surface. The number one problem is that we cannot drill down far enough. The drills used by the oil and gas industries cannot withstand the formidable temperatures and pressures that are found miles down without becoming exponentially more expensive with depth.
Quaise is working to replace the conventional drill bits that mechanically break up the rock with millimetre-wave energy (cousins to the microwaves many of us cook with). Those millimetre waves literally melt then vaporise the rock to create ever-deeper holes.
Steady progress
The May demonstration at the Nabors facility is only the latest of many in an aggressive timeline to prove the technology. The ultimate goal is to provide a renewable source of energy on parity with oil and gas. Araque explained: “This is not a company built to develop a drilling gadget. We aim to become a geothermal developer. Our aim is to access clean heat and energy that is abundant, reliable, and affordable on a global scale.”
The general technique behind the Quaise drilling approach was developed at MIT over some 15 years. Scientists there showed that millimetre waves could indeed drill a hole in basalt (basalt and granite make up the majority of rock at great depth). This was promising in part because the gyrotron machine that produces the millimetre-wave energy is not new. It has been used for some 70 years in research towards nuclear fusion as an energy source.
Quaise has been developing the technique to drill deeper and deeper holes. The holes drilled at MIT were two in. in diameter by two in. deep. Outside the Quaise lab in Houston earlier this year, engineers succeeded in drilling a hole four in. in diameter and 10 ft deep.
Andres Calabressi, Head of Manufacturing at Quaise, explained that beginning in March 2025, the company lowered columns of granite about nine in. in diameter into a conventionally drilled hole under the rig. Together those columns made a core some 80 ft long that sits inside a metal casing. The latter is outfitted with ports to monitor parameters like heat and pressure data that allow the team to test recipes for optimal drilling.
The Quaise engineers then integrated the millimetre-wave technology with the rig. In the demonstration, millimetre waves were shot into the granite column, deepening a hole four in. in diameter that had already been drilled to ten ft. The following week, the team drilled to 30 ft for the first time and the next goal on this phase of the work is 40 ft.
Key parameters like rock temperature were tracked during the demonstration.
Araque noted that the demonstration was full scale in size but not in power as the gyrotron involved produced 100 KW of power, one-tenth of the power that will be commercially relevant and roughly equivalent to the power of a car.
In June 2025, Quaise expects the delivery of a much larger gyrotron, capable of producing 1 MW of power.
In the meantime, the company is preparing for another demonstration planned for July 2025 in Marble Falls, Texas. There, the team aims to drill multiple holes 130 m (about 425 ft) deep into an actual granite outcrop for the first time.
Additional advances
Quaise has also been tackling other scientific and engineering challenges associated with harvesting the energy from superhot, superdeep rock. In 2024, a team at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédéral de Lausanne reported new insights into what happens when superhot, superdeep rock is exposed to water that can eventually transfer the rocks’ heat to the surface. The work, supported in part by Quaise, was published in the journal Nature Communications. It confirmed earlier modelling work also supported by Quaise.
In addition, Quaise has an in-house engineer who has been working on the design of superhot geothermal power plants.
Towards the future
Araque concluded the demonstration by describing the company’s blueprint for developing a superhot, superdeep geothermal resource available around the globe. It involves dividing the world into three tiers based on geothermal gradient, or how close the resource is to the surface. Tier I, for example, will focus on relatively accessible superhot rock. This means that the first Quaise power plant will probably be located in the American West, perhaps near the Newberry Volcano site in Oregon. Newberry has a long history of geothermal exploration.
Although still a while off, Tier III sites, which will involve drilling as much as 12 miles down hold the key to making superhot geothermal a truly global energy source, according to Quaise. Tier III sites could provide power to more than 90% of humanity.
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