Next-Gen Geothermal Gets Two Wins: Quaise Lands Up to $25M From DOE, Sage Heads to Ormat's Blue Mountain
Two next-generation geothermal companies moved closer to the grid on the same day. Quaise Energy was picked for up to $25 million in Department of Energy support for its superhot plant in Oregon. Sage Geosystems chose Ormat’s Blue Mountain power plant in Nevada as the site for its next commercial-scale enhanced geothermal system (EGS).
Different technologies, different business models. Same destination: firm power, around the clock, from rock that conventional geothermal can’t use.
Quaise goes for the hottest rock
Quaise’s award comes from a DOE effort worth $99 million in total, covering next-generation geothermal field tests and resource confirmation. The money backs drilling, stimulation and flow testing of the first two wells at its site in central Oregon, south of Bend near Newberry Volcano. Results from those two wells will shape the third.
The targets are aggressive. Quaise wants an average reservoir temperature above 300°C, with its deepest well going past 400°C, which would be the hottest well in the Western Hemisphere. The first set of three wells should deliver more than 25 MW gross. Phase one aims for over 50 MW and first power to the grid by 2030, and the company talks about room for up to 1 GW at the site.
Heat is the whole game in geothermal. Hotter water carries far more energy per well, so each expensive hole produces more power. The catch is getting there. Quaise’s long-term bet is millimeter-wave drilling, a technology out of MIT research that melts and vaporizes rock with high-frequency beams instead of grinding through it. In the meantime it’s using conventional drilling for the shallower work.
CEO Carlos Araque called the award recognition of the company’s field progress. Research partners include Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Oregon State University. Quaise closed a $180 million Series B in August led by Nabors Industries and Prelude Ventures, with Japan’s JERA and Idemitsu Kosan also in.
Sage plugs into an existing plant
Sage is taking a more capital-light route. Its Project Vector will drill a two-well EGS system at Blue Mountain, near Winnemucca, Nevada. Fluid circulates through an engineered reservoir, picks up heat from hot dry rock, and comes back up. The heat then feeds Ormat’s existing power plant.
That’s the clever part. Sage doesn’t need to build its own turbines, substation or grid connection. It supplies heat to a plant that already has all three. Drilling of the first well starts in the fourth quarter of 2026, first electricity is expected in 2027, and full production in 2028, subject to permits.
Ormat isn’t just the landlord. It signed a strategic collaboration with Sage in August 2025 and co-led Sage’s roughly $100 million Series B in January. Sage also has a 150 MW geothermal deal with Meta, and it has run its South Texas demonstration site for more than 120 days. COO Jason Peart said Blue Mountain is the right place to show how firm geothermal power can reach the market at scale.
Why it matters now
Data centers want power that runs 24 hours a day and doesn’t emit carbon. Solar and batteries can get part of the way. Nuclear takes a decade. Geothermal is one of the few options that can deliver firm clean power this decade, if the new drilling methods hold up.
Quaise is the long shot with the big upside. Sage is the pragmatic retrofit. The industry needs both to work.