Sage Geosystems announced the first closing of $17 million in Series A funding led by Chesapeake Energy Corporation (“Chesapeake”) (NASDAQ: CHK) and joined by technology investor Arch Meredith, Helium-3 Ventures and with continued support from existing investors Virya, LLC, Nabors Industries, and Ignis Energy. The investment will fully fund the first-of-its-kind 3MW commercial Geopressured Geothermal System (GGS) facility, which will be built in Texas.
The 3MW commercial facility (called EarthStore) will use Sage Geosystems’ innovative technology that harvests energy from pressurized water stored deep underground. And the facility will be able to store energy for short and long duration periods and can be paired with intermittent renewable energy sources, including wind and solar, to provide baseload, dispatchable power, and inertia to the electric grid.
Sage Geosystems is in the process of manufacturing equipment, with construction of the 3MW facility starting in Q2 2024 and a targeted commission date of Q4 2024. And the exact location of the facility will be announced soon.
Last year, Sage Geosystems successfully demonstrated the EarthStore system in a full-scale commercial pilot project in Texas. And the pilot produced 200 kW for more than 18 hours (long-duration) and 1 MW for 30 minutes (load-following), generating electricity with Pelton turbines to run equipment on location. The system has a roundtrip efficiency (RTE) of 70-75 percent and water losses of less than 2 percent.
Evercore acted as the exclusive placement agent for Sage Geosystems in connection with this funding, and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati provided legal counsel.
KEY QUOTE:
“The first close of our Series A funding and our commercial facility are significant milestones in our mission to make Geopressured Geothermal System (GGS) technologies a reality. The success of our GGS technologies is not only critical to Sage Geosystems becoming post-revenue, but it is an essential step in accelerating the development of this proprietary geothermal baseload approach. This progress would not be possible without the ongoing support from our existing investors, and we look forward to continuing this work with our new investors.”
- Cindy Taff, CEO of Sage Geosystems
