The technology being discussed hasn't actually drilled much of anything yet. Their latest press release with actual numbers[0] gives depths drilled in inches. Nice progress, yeah, but they're not anywhere near competitive with even water wells, much less the current generation of conventional oilfield drilling technology.
Geothermal power is indeed cool, but to get it usable anywhere on Earth instead of a few places where magma currents happen to be near the surface, we'll probably need several orders of magnitude deeper and wider holes than we're currently capable of drilling just for starters. Can these guys do the job? Maybe, but let's just say I'm not planning to invest in them.
> The technology being discussed hasn't actually drilled much of anything yet. Their latest press release with actual numbers[0] gives depths drilled in inches.
That's what bothers me about this. If drilling with microwaves works, why aren't there industrial applications? Laser cutters are widely used, from little ones that engrave plastic to big ones that cut steel plate. Yet nobody seems to be selling microwave cutters. In industrial applications, you don't even have to fit the microwave generator into the hole and keep it working in a hostile environment.
The idea was suggested back in 2002, but seems to have gone nowhere.
Microwaves are a longer wavelength of light which makes them less precise. So people don’t use them to cut stuff for the reason lithography swapped to ultra violet light.
Geothermal power is indeed cool, but to get it usable anywhere on Earth instead of a few places where magma currents happen to be near the surface, we'll probably need several orders of magnitude deeper and wider holes than we're currently capable of drilling just for starters. Can these guys do the job? Maybe, but let's just say I'm not planning to invest in them.
[0] https://www.quaise.energy/news/from-lab-to-field-testing