The systems I worked on were for cooling larger structures like commercial greenhouses, gov installations and mansions. 64° degree water would be pumped up from 400' down, run thru a series of chillers (for a/c) and then returned underground - about 20° or 25° warmer.
I always thought this method could be used to provide a/c for neighborhoods, operated as a neighborhood utility. I've not seen it done tho. I've seen neighborhood owned water supplies and sewer systems; it tells me the ownership part seems feasible.
That’s going to be very dependant on location.
Here in NZ there are regions where water is boiling at surface level.
According to the below, 18% of our power is produced with it.
https://www.eeca.govt.nz/insights/energy-in-new-zealand/rene...
https://www.araner.com/blog/district-heating-in-sweden-effic...
Here's a more realistic evaluation of Fervo.[1]
[1] https://www.latitudemedia.com/news/what-fervos-approach-says...
Compared to some other new approaches for getting clean base load power, it seems like they’ve been pretty grounded and methodical.
But what is the "breakthrough" if there is one? The article doesn't really suggest any breakthrough that is unlocking this potential energy? Or maybe I'm looking for a technological breakthrough where there isn't one.
There will be other learning by doing advances in how you structure your power plant design to take advantage of these to make practical long term power production possible (well spacing and injection / production placement / flow rate and temperature decline management).
Those are very different from EGS
> Several companies are now building upon existing techniques for accessing geothermal resources by integrating enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) into operations. While conventional geothermal systems produce energy using hot water or steam, pumped from naturally occurring hydrothermal reservoirs trapped in rock formations underground, EGS use innovative drilling technologies, such as those used in fracking operations, to drill horizontally and create hydrothermal reservoirs where they don’t currently exist.
Geothermal reservoirs exist at depth.
Drilling horizontally doesn’t magically reduce the depth, nor the problem that drilling in to hot rock is like drilling in to plasticine, at least for temperatures worth working with.
The assumption is that if you can increase drilling efficiencies enough then you don't even need a fault hosted or similar system to bring that energy close to the surface, you can just drill down deep enough to get at similar temperatures. That is a big assumption in the economics.
Doesn't that sound useful to you?
No particular breakthrough, but there's a learning curve and they learn more as they do more. Other industries sometimes work that way, too.
https://www.austinvernon.site/blog/geothermalupdate2026.html
Long Valley Caldera Geothermal Area | Open Energy Information https://share.google/5DvljMhL3EVMDeIAL
[1] (2023) https://time.com/6302342/fervo-fracking-technology-geotherma...
https://www.opb.org/article/2025/10/06/super-hot-rocks-geoth...
Turbines are completly mature, and nothing dealing with some new deap drilling breakthrough or heat exhanger advancement, or more efficient and durable pumps, crittical CO², or H²O ?, not yet. Existing geothermal plants use the same generation technology as a coal plant, but use near surface heat assosiated with volcanoes and hot springs, and there is a distinct limit on more of that.
Geothermal will compete with solar if they can get the cost low enough. I hope they succeed!
can you find curves like this for any other power source?
also batteries are getting exponentially cheap too
In almost all pareto optimal least cost energy system models that I've seen, high penetration of solar, wind, batteries plus some minority amount of (clean) baseload power is the most capital efficient energy system.
IT'S HARD TO IMAGINE LESS IDIOTIC WAY OF ENERGY PRODUCTION
