[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.