[anonporridge]

The problem is that there are no large population centers near Yellowstone. Maybe you could reach Salt Lake City or Denver without prohibitive transmission line inefficiency?

Maybe increasing automation means that we can build more factories and data centers near these sources of massive renewable energy potential without struggling to convince workers to live in these remote locations (although that might not be a huge challenge for a beautiful place like Yellowstone).

[dredmorbius]

High-capacity long-distance electrical transmission is actually both cheap and efficient, relative to many other energy options.

It's far less expensive to build one high-capacity line than many low-capacity lines (e.g., serving wind farms or solar farms).

Geothermal has the added benefit that it's dispatchable power. It can be extracted on demand, when the need arises. As a complement to wind and solar, it's actually a great fit.

[liketochill]

If you have a plant that can make 100 MW continuously then that is what you do with it. Unless someone is going to pay you to turn it off, you keep it running.

[dredmorbius]

Depends on if you're considering the generator perspective or the grid perspective.

The grid doesn't simply want megawatts. It wants a balance of supply and demand, and a minimisation of outages.

Wind and solar cannot be spun up on demand. Hydro can be, and in general is (much lower-capacity hydro is grid smoothing). Hydro will even suck capacity off the grid where possible (pumped storage).

Geo which can load-match, disable when grid is oversupplied, and fill in for cloudy & windless days, makes all kinds of sense at the grid level.

[rbanffy]

And, if it’s near the coast, it can make drinking water or, at least, clouds that’ll rain somewhere inland.

[dredmorbius]

That's an option.

With geothermal, though, you don't actually want to run flat-out all the time, as the geothermal reservoir does require time to recover, whether that's groundwater refresh or heating up after a period of high generation which extracts heat faster than it is transmitted through surrounding rock (most cases) or magma (not yet a major utilisation mode).

Soaking up excess generating capacity through interruptable heavy loads is somewhat better suited to wind or solar. If you have a task you can divert electricity that will be generated anyway to, so much the better. That's what pumped-hydro, desalination, grid-scale battery banks, or fuel synthesis represent.