Fervo declares commercial operation at Cape Station's first 33 MW GeoBlock

Fervo Energy said on October 1, 2026 that the first of the three 33-megawatt GeoBlocks at Cape Station Phase I in Beaver County, Utah declared commercial operation on September 30, 2026, one day before its contractual commercial operation date, and that revenue is now being generated under the company's power purchase agreement. The release says the first GeoBlock produced 33 MW of net power production, which its summary bullets say meets the expected production threshold under the PPA, and describes the plant as the first greenfield enhanced geothermal development in the world to achieve contractual commercial operations.

The plant synchronized to the grid on September 24, 2026, the milestone The Duck Curve covered in its First Power coverage, and per the release declared commercial operation on September 30. Fervo says it built and commissioned the power facility for its first GeoBlock in 23 months and that it is confident it can reach an 18-month construction timeline for future GeoBlocks. The release does not say what date the 23-month count starts from. Fervo's prospectus for its initial public offering, filed May 14, 2026, says the company broke ground on Cape Station, its first GeoCluster, in June 2023; the prospectus dates the start of the whole development and the release counts the construction and commissioning of one power facility, so the two spans measure different things. Fervo's earlier Nevada pilot, Project Red, is listed at 3 megawatts online in the company's Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2026, filed August 13, 2026.

What comes next, per the release: commissioning continues at the remaining two Phase I GeoBlocks, which Fervo expects to reach contractual COD by January 1, 2027, and the next phase, an additional 400 MW, is under construction with an expected COD in 2028. David Ulrey, Fervo's chief financial officer, put the portfolio at "over 1 gigawatt of binding PPAs signed" in the release. The 10-Q reported 658 megawatts of binding power purchase agreements as of that date, and the 396 MW Google PPA that The Duck Curve covered in its coverage of the Google deal was signed on August 26, 2026; the two sum to 1,054 MW, The Duck Curve's arithmetic rather than a Fervo figure. Which contract the first GeoBlock's revenue flows under, the release does not say: it refers to "Fervo's Power Purchase Agreement (PPA)" in the singular and names no buyer. The prospectus called a Shell contract, for a guaranteed capacity of 31 megawatts over 15 contract years with a scheduled commercial operation date in late 2026, the company's most near-term PPA.

The release against the filings

The company's own guidance had the date later. The 10-Q, filed August 13, 2026, said Fervo expected to deliver first power from Cape Station "by late 2026", expected its first GeoBlocks "to be operational at the end of 2026", and expected approximately 100 megawatts of operating capacity by early 2027; its risk factors put first power "in the fourth quarter of 2026" and added that there was no guarantee of achieving those CODs within those timeframes or at all. The prospectus carried the same late-2026 expectation for first power. September 30 is the last day of the third quarter. The 10-Q also reported that, as of its filing date, 79 of the 80 governmental permits and approvals necessary to commence commercial operations at Cape Station Phase I had been received, with the single remaining permit in process. Neither the October 1 release nor the 8-K restates the count; the word permit appears in the release only in its forward-looking boilerplate, so the last public figure for Phase I permitting is the 10-Q's, as of August 13, 2026.

The revenue line changes too. The 10-Q said revenues for the six months ended June 30, 2026 were up $0.2 million from the same period of 2025, related to ancillary fees associated with rights to geothermal production, and were "not expected to be a significant component of our long-term revenue, as we have not yet commenced large-scale commercial operations." The October 1 release says revenue is being generated under the PPA and gives no amount.

Fervo furnished the release to the SEC as Exhibit 99.1 to a Form 8-K dated October 1, 2026, under Item 7.01, Regulation FD Disclosure, signed by Ulrey; the exhibit's body text is word for word the newsroom release, 33-megawatt GeoBlocks included. The September 24 First Power release drew no such filing: as of October 2, 2026, EDGAR's filing index for Fervo lists nothing between the September 1 8-K that disclosed the Google PPA and the October 1 8-K. The 33 MW figure still sits beside a different one in the periodic filings. The prospectus defines a GeoBlock as "our standardized, 50-megawatt Organic Rankine Cycle power plants", and the 10-Q describes "50-megawatt GeoBlocks" and estimates the capital expenditure to construct a single GeoBlock at approximately $7,000/kW as of June 30, 2026. Neither the September 24 release nor the October 1 release relates the 33-megawatt Phase I GeoBlocks to the 50-megawatt standard.

Outlook

The next date the release sets is January 1, 2027, the contractual COD Fervo expects for the remaining two Phase I GeoBlocks. If it holds, Phase I's approximately 100 MW would be at contractual COD on the first day of the first quarter of 2027, the window the 10-Q's risk factors gave for approximately 100 megawatts of operating capacity; a contractual COD is a date the contract sets, not a measure of what the plant is producing, and the release gives an output figure only for the first GeoBlock. Fervo's third-quarter report, expected in mid-November 2026 if the company keeps the cadence of its August 13 filing (The Duck Curve's arithmetic), is where the schedule, the 33-versus-50-megawatt GeoBlock definition, and the revenue from the first GeoBlock's PPA would be restated under securities law rather than in a release. The Shell contract's scheduled late-2026 commercial operation date in the prospectus is the other date to watch; whether the first GeoBlock is the plant that serves it, none of the documents cited here says.