[mgfist]

> There's no reason why this shouldn't work. But they've been at it for 9 years, with considerable funding, and it doesn't really work yet. That's a concern.

It does work. They've had a pilot project producing 3 megawatts since 2023. But scaling takes a lot of time and money, particularly when it's something new and you have to go through a lot of operational learning.

Shale took something like 30 years to become a thing. 9 years is nothing in the energy space.

[micro2588]

It does work technically I think it is still an open question if it can work economically. There are issues of commercially viable flow rates / thermal decline rates that are harder physical limits you run up against and the pilot design doesn't address. In human timescale terms it's more like heat mining rather than renewable heat due to thermal depletion rate vs replenishment rate. These systems have a targeted lifetime of ~20-30 years and net power will decline over this timespan.