https://newatlas.com/energy/earthgrid-tunnel-boring-robot/ * SUBSCRIBE AD-FREE * LOG IN * HOME * LIFESTYLE + Health & Wellbeing + Outdoors + Tiny Houses + Architecture + Around the Home + Good Thinking + Holiday Destinations + View all LIFESTYLE categories + Health & Wellbeing + Outdoors + Tiny Houses + Architecture + Around the Home + Good Thinking + Holiday Destinations + View all LIFESTYLE categories * SCIENCE + Energy + Medical + Space + Materials + Biology + Environment + Physics + View all SCIENCE categories + Energy + Medical + Space + Materials + Biology + Environment + Physics + View all SCIENCE categories * TECHNOLOGY + Photography + Military + Mobile Technology + Games + Drones + Home Entertainment + Deals + View all TECHNOLOGY categories + Photography + Military + Mobile Technology + Games + Drones + Home Entertainment + Deals + View all TECHNOLOGY categories * TRANSPORT + Automotive + Aircraft + Bicycles + Motorcycles + Marine + Urban Transport + View all TRANSPORT categories + Automotive + Aircraft + Bicycles + Motorcycles + Marine + Urban Transport + View all TRANSPORT categories (c) 2022 New Atlas New Atlas logo Menu * HOME * LIFESTYLE + Health & Wellbeing + Outdoors + Tiny Houses + Architecture + Around the Home + Good Thinking + Holiday Destinations + View all LIFESTYLE categories * SCIENCE + Energy + Medical + Space + Materials + Biology + Environment + Physics + View all SCIENCE categories * TECHNOLOGY + Photography + Military + Mobile Technology + Games + Drones + Home Entertainment + Deals + View all TECHNOLOGY categories * TRANSPORT + Automotive + Aircraft + Bicycles + Motorcycles + Marine + Urban Transport + View all TRANSPORT categories * SUBSCRIBE AD-FREE * LOG IN Show Search [ ]Search Query Submit Search Energy Earthgrid aims to re-wire the USA using super-cheap tunnel tech By Loz Blain July 20, 2022 * Facebook * Twitter * Flipboard * LinkedIn [] / # Earthgrid aims to re-wire the USA using super-cheap tunnel tech Earthgrid's plan is to put multiple plasma spallation cutters on rotating contactless boring robots Earthgrid's plan is to put multiple plasma spallation cutters on rotating contactless boring robots EarthGrid View 5 Images Earthgrid's plan is to put multiple plasma spallation cutters on rotating contactless boring robots 1/5 Earthgrid's plan is to put multiple plasma spallation cutters on rotating contactless boring robots EarthGrid 2/5 The Rapid Burrowing Robot (RBR) places many high-temp plasma torches on rotating discs EarthGrid 3/5 Large-bore tunnels will require "mother rig" and "father rig" attachments behind the first tunneling machine to widen the hole EarthGrid 4/5 Pushcarts hold excavated material along the power supply line EarthGrid 5/5 The contactless cutting discs have plasma torches mounted in a Fibonacci spiral pattern, such that they cover the entire area of the hole when the discs are rotated EarthGrid [icon-mouse-sc] View gallery - 5 images Bay Area startup Earthgrid says it's developing a plasma boring robot that can dig underground tunnels 100x faster and up to 98% cheaper than existing tech, and it plans to use it to start re-wiring America's energy, internet and utilities grids. Most tunnels dug today are made by massive, mechanical rotary boring machines, which scratch cutting wheels against rock and evacuate the debris behind them, lining the tunnel walls as they go. It's painstakingly slow, hugely expensive, and the cutting heads and drill bits often need changing or maintenance. But there's another way to get through the toughest rock - as we outlined in our January article about Petra's thermal drilling robot. Blasting rock with high temperatures can fracture and vaporize the stone in a process called spallation, and blasting this damaged rock with high pressures causes it to flake, chip and blow away. You can do this without touching the rock walls at all, so the equipment can do entire tunnels without stopping if necessary. It can run entirely on electrical power, opening up the possibility of entirely emissions-free drilling, and both Petra and Earthgrid claim it's much, much faster and cheaper than doing things mechanically - to the point where previously unfeasible projects can become economically viable. The contactless cutting discs have plasma torches mounted in a Fibonacci spiral pattern, such that they cover the entire area of the hole when the discs are rotated The contactless cutting discs have plasma torches mounted in a Fibonacci spiral pattern, such that they cover the entire area of the hole when the discs are rotated EarthGrid Earthgrid doesn't seem to be as far along as Petra - indeed, it's operating on pre-seed funding at the moment. But its intellectual property takes a spallation boring robot like Petra's to the next level, placing multiple 27,000 degC (48,600 degF) plasma torches onto large discs held out in front of a "Rapid Burrowing Robot (RBR)." The torches are arranged in a Fibonacci spiral, starting from the center and widening out until they cover the full diameter of the bore. Where Petra's thermal drilling robot moves its head around to widen its hole, the RBR will fire on all torches at once, and rotate the torch-bearing discs to ensure full coverage, blasting the rock backward and collecting it into small pushcarts, each connected along the cable supplying electricity to the drill rig. That cable will need to handle some serious juice. In estimations submitted as part of a patent, Earthgrid founder Troy Helming describes a potential embodiment of the concept using 72 plasma torches to drill a 1-meter (3.3-ft) bore. In its low-power state, with each torch consuming 500 kW, Helming estimates a total power draw of 40 megawatts. If you need to get cracking, the high-power state would draw as much as a constant 120 MW. The Rapid Burrowing Robot (RBR) places many high-temp plasma torches The Rapid Burrowing Robot (RBR) places many high-temp plasma torches on rotating discs EarthGrid That's for a hole you can barely crawl through; to triple the diameter and create a utility-sized tunnel you can comfortably walk through on a flat floor, you'd need to attach a larger "mother rig" behind the front rig. And if you wanted to move to a 10-m (33-ft) tunnel you could put a couple of lanes of traffic through, you'd need to attach another, even bigger "father rig" behind that. The total power draw in a "stage 3" system like this could get as high as 1.38 gigawatts - but that's by no means the limit; upgrading the torches to higher power units would get the job done considerably faster, if an even more epic amount of electricity becomes available. In a high-speed configuration, Earthgrid claims it can tunnel up to 1 km (0.62 miles) per day, which it says is up to 100 times faster than existing borers. For reference, Elon Musk's Boring Company has designed its porpoising Prufrock mechanical tunneling machine to do 0.24 km (0.15 miles) a day - although it says its medium-term goal is to get Prufrock up closer to 1.13 km (0.7 miles) per day. Mind you, on its debut, drilling a 3.2-km (2-mile) tunnel under the Las Vegas Convention Center, it managed just 15 m (49 ft) per day. Pushcarts hold excavated material along the power supply line Pushcarts hold excavated material along the power supply line EarthGrid As to cost, well, Earthgrid says a low-cost configuration could come in at as little as US$300 per meter (3.3 ft) of tunnel. "We are so much less expensive," reads the company's website, "due to far lower operating costs (no need to change out drill bits & cutter heads multiple times daily, much lower energy consumption, robotics = far fewer workers, no drilling mud and/or drilling chemicals to dispose of, easier spoils removal, sale of our spoils for road & concrete manufacturing, etc.)" The company says it'll either sell drilling as a service, or build, own, operate and maintain tunnels for customers looking for a long-term lease or toll arrangement. But it also hopes to put enough interlinking customer projects in place to create a subterranean network spanning the entire contiguous USA. If power cables of sufficient capacity were run through this network, renewable energy could potentially be distributed across the country, matching demand surges on the east coast with production surges on the west coast. EarthGrid...the future of infrastructure Earthgrid might look like a long-shot startup operating out of a warehouse next to a gym in Richmond, but founder Troy Helming has some form as an entrepreneur - at least, according to his own LinkedIn page. He founded and acted as CEO for Tradewind Energy, turned it into a billion-dollar "unicorn" and sold it - it would later become the #1 wind energy developer in the USA. He was then the founder and CEO of Pristine Sun, which developed small utility-scale and community-scale solar power plants, and he sold that at near-unicorn status as well with some US$750 million in projects. He's also got some experience with the competition; he spent two years at Arcbyt before it was renamed Petra. And the gym next to the Earthgrid warehouse? He's Chairman of the Board there too, among a number of other projects. Earthgrid is moving toward a seed funding round, and as such, not a ton of information is available on its current status. But in another LinkedIn post, Helming shared some progress news: the company has been "approved as a utility in New York, Florida, and Washington (state). We now have preferred and streamlined Rights of Way access for our tunnels in 12 states ... equipment is arriving in Richmond CA next month to start building our 1st multi-torch Tunnel Boring Robot ... We hope to be boring tunnels later this year for customer revenue ... We've moved back into our office and industrial R&D/testing/ warehouse space in Richmond CA, and we're upgrading the power capacity to have >6,000 amps at 480 volts (lots of power)." EarthGrid Tunnel Network Development Plan 2021 1080p v4 At this point, we have to acknowledge the bro-tastic tint to some of Earthgrid's current communications. "Imagine a robot with ten lightsabers on the front," says Helming in a promotional video, "kinda vaporizing through the rock and soil, and then a Mandalorian jetpack on the back blowing out little cornflake-sized bits of rock." The company's two business models are called BADASS (Boring and Drilling as a Simple Service) and BOOM (Build, Own, Operate & Maintain). Maybe VCs love this stuff, who knows? We look forward to learning more about this project as it progresses. Check out a video below. Tech Demo 2021, 20 second Clip of Boring Source: Earthgrid View gallery - 5 images Tags EnergyTunnelInfrastructure * Facebook * Twitter * Flipboard * LinkedIn 18 comments Loz Blain Loz Blain Loz has been one of our most versatile contributors since 2007, and has since proven himself as a photographer, videographer, presenter, producer and podcast engineer, as well as a senior features writer. Joining the team as a motorcycle specialist, he's covered just about everything for New Atlas, concentrating lately on eVTOLs, hydrogen, energy, aviation, audiovisual, weird stuff and things that go fast. Most Viewed * HIMARS is a high-precision multiple rocket launcher Military HIMARS rocket launcher may change the game in Ukraine * QinetiQ has demonstratd the world's first FSOC laser-controlled drone, invulnerable to RF-spamming countermeasures Drones World's first laser-controlled drone easily evades countermeasures * Taking sunlight, water and carbon dioxide as inputs, this solar tower in Spain produces carbon-neutral jet fuel and diesel Energy All-in-one solar tower produces jet fuel from CO2, water and sunlight Load More 18 comments Sign in to post a comment. Please keep comments to less than 150 words. No abusive material or spam will be published. WONKY KLERKY July 20, 2022 01:17 AM Unfortunately . . . ...... The Portant of Doom bit - again: A naughty boys dream. ie. The security provisions for prevention of illegal access to tunnels will have to be commensurate with: depth of 'bore' + length of bore + diameter of bore + conducted services within + considerations of just what a bore particular passes under. And all that, if the projected execution of the scheme turns out to be ~ as/NewAtlas article, will be a lot of tube to watch. aksdad July 20, 2022 02:04 AM All they need is a grid-scale nuclear reactor to power a stage 3 system and they're good to go. JACKofALLTRADES47 July 20, 2022 03:26 AM this will be used to BORE ultra Deep Geothermal Bore Holes to 4 plus miles Super Hot Rock Equals SUPER HEATED STEAM to spin the turbines in ALREADY Existing Power Plants to Drive the Generators and Power the ELECTRIC [?][?] [?][?][?][?]Grids to Power Factories and Homes BUMMER for those that have been BLACKMAILING the whole WORLD the OIL and GAS; Drilling Companies are Going to Love this New Technology; Long Term job Security for all of the;Oil and Gas Workers) BECAUSE GEOTHERMAL WELLS; can be Installed anyplace ; NO ( CO2 and The SYSTEMS can be; UNDERGROUND; got to Make the N I M B 's happy not in my backyard pete-y July 20, 2022 04:07 AM The plasma and blow away process seems proven.. Only slight problem when scaled up - bit like lots of electric cars and trucks.- Everyone will need the electricity. Trylon July 20, 2022 04:30 AM Bring on the Hyperloop! 3 meters is almost the exact diameter of a Hyperloop tunnel. TedTheJackal July 20, 2022 05:34 AM Crashing the local power grid might be a problem but anything that uses a Fibonacci sequence sounds interesting. They need to hook up with NASA about using the system to excavate Moon/Mars bases. Jinpa July 20, 2022 09:35 AM They might want to contact the OneCall pipe locator service, because vaporizing utility and fossil-fuel lines might be more than a little embarrassing. The public has little knowledge of what is under a lot of roadways, from Interstates to local and municipal streets. ted July 20, 2022 09:45 AM A marvelous idea. "..emissions free drilling.." Ahhh, tell me about that one again. Call George Jetson in 2050. A concept that doesn't meet rational thought at any point on the line: power, cost, volume, transmission, waste, speed, materials, ..... noteugene July 20, 2022 09:59 AM Dynamite to boring machines to plasma cutters. Good job. This is an amazing step forward. You know our outdated electric grid needs replacing, just in time. Videos suck but I guess I can find better videos elsewhere...this is really good news. There's always a naysayer in the room but what I've observed about them is: They never invent anything, just criticize those who do. Kpar July 20, 2022 12:54 PM A very interesting concept, but there will be unanticipated snags along the way. Not all rock is created equal, and the differing water content (think underground aquifers!) may make the use of these plasma cutters quite exciting (ever seen a water-gas explosion? ). Still, this is an idea I would like to see developed. I have, for a long time, felt that the USA should consider building a water transport system across the continent. We always have some areas in drought, while we often have massive flooding elsewhere at the same time. This fresh water could be piped from where it is not wanted to where it is needed, and we would no longer have to run the risk of (permanently) depleting our underground lakes and streams, as we are currently doing. Load More Saving comment... [ ] Post New Atlas logo GET OUR NEWSLETTER Over 220,000 people receive our email newsletter. Get your daily dose of extraordinary ideas! 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