Traditional geothermal power, which has been around for over a century, exploits naturally occurring fissures underground, pushing water through them to gather heat and run a turbine. Unfortunately, those fissures only occur naturally in particular geographies, limiting geothermal’s reach. For decades, engineers and entrepreneurs have dreamed of creating their own fissures in the underground rock, which would allow them to drill geothermal wells almost anywhere.These kind of enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) have been attempted again and again since the 1970s, with no luck getting costs down low enough to be competitive. Despite dozens of attempts, there has never been a working commercial enhanced geothermal power plant.Until now.Last week, the geothermal developer Fervo Energy announced that its first full-scale power plant passed its production test phase with flying colors. With that, Fervo has, at long last, made it through all the various tests and certifications needed to prove out its technology. It now has a working, fully licensed power plant, selling electricity on the wholesale market, and enough power purchase agreements (PPAs) with eager customers to build many more. EGS is now a real thing — the first new entrant into the power production game in many decades.Here at Volts we are unabashed geothermal nerds, so naturally I was excited to discuss this news with Fervo co-founder and CEO Tim Latimer, an ex-oil-and-gas engineer who moved into geothermal a decade ago with a vision of how to make it work: he would borrow the latest technologies from the oil and gas sector. Ten years later, he’s pulled it off. I talked with Latimer about how EGS works, the current geographical and size limitations, how he plans to get his technology on a rapid learning curve to bring down costs, the value of clean firm power, the future of flexible geothermal, and much more. This is a juicy one. Get full access to Volts at www.volts.wtf/subscribe