Geothermal company Zanskar bought a New Mexico power plant in 2024 that appeared from the outside to be failing. The shallow wells had been rapidly losing heat, and the plant was having trouble generating power as a result.

Now, after drilling a new well and operating the power plant for a full year, Zanskar says that it has made a complete turnaround. The Lightning Dock site, according to figures from the company shared exclusively with WIRED, has become one of the most productive pumped geothermal wells in the US, providing enough heat to run the power plant with no issues.

The productivity over the past year at the Lightning Dock site “fundamentally changes how people think about these types of systems that we really thought we understood in the past,” says Zanskar cofounder Joel Edwards. It’s the latest bit of good news for the long-neglected geothermal industry, which is experiencing an investment renaissance.

Innovative drilling technology and artificial intelligence—along with a little bit of luck—played roles in this milestone. And while not all traditional wells may have the same set of circumstances as Zanskar had at Lightning Dock, the company says that its success is a wake-up call that old well sites are still worth further exploration.

Traditional geothermal energy relies on tapping hot water within the earth to generate electricity by pumping it to the surface and spinning turbines. In theory, it’s an excellent way of generating renewable baseload power: people have been harnessing steam from hot springs for thousands of years. But geographic constraints—power plants need to be situated on geothermal reserves, which are overwhelmingly in the western US—as well as the difficulty and expense traditionally involved in finding new wells mean geothermal energy constitutes less than 1 percent of the electricity mix in the US.