It's a fascinating project and a real shame funding was cut off. The deep borehole in Mexico was also stopped due to lack of funding.
Maybe they can use global warming dollars to renew these deep borehole projects around the world, as I suspect there is new geological science to be discovered as observations appear to deviate from theory:
"Because of higher-than-expected temperatures at this depth and location, 180 °C (356 °F) instead of the expected 100 °C (212 °F), drilling deeper was deemed unfeasible. The unexpected decrease in density, the greater porosity, and the unexpectedly high temperatures caused the rock to behave somewhat like a plastic, making drilling nearly impossible"
That's strange, wouldn't a plastic be much easier to drill into? Maybe it required a different kind of drill head that they had no way of getting down there within budget?
The problem is the pressure. Even steel gets soft when it gets hot enough and with the pressure its like trying to push folded toilet paper through cake dough.
I don't know. I am afraid that article is bullshit. So it doesn't make sense to give an answer to your question.
This aside, let me give some examples about geothermy. In Iceland and in New Zealand it is possible to get hot water from the ground without deep drillings. In Switzerland there was a failed project about geothermy, because the drill down to the granite bedrock at a depth of about 2700 m and deeper caused an earthquake. People in Basel are very sensitive because it was a location of an huge earthquake 1356.
In other words, we don't need to drill so deep at all. YAGNI.
Another idea might be to have solar panels or wind turbines up top and geothermal below. Both could use molten salt storage, from which energy is generated on demand.
This way, any heat generated from geothermal would not be wasted.
It's just a matter of whether the economics of drilling and maintaining the bore hole would be worth it.
Maybe they can use global warming dollars to renew these deep borehole projects around the world, as I suspect there is new geological science to be discovered as observations appear to deviate from theory:
"Because of higher-than-expected temperatures at this depth and location, 180 °C (356 °F) instead of the expected 100 °C (212 °F), drilling deeper was deemed unfeasible. The unexpected decrease in density, the greater porosity, and the unexpectedly high temperatures caused the rock to behave somewhat like a plastic, making drilling nearly impossible"