Geothermal seems to be limited by finding suitable places for it, which is generally where you only need to build fairly shallow wells. Building deep wells is expensive. If you can build deeper wells faster and cheaper then it opens it up to move areas.
Is that correct?
Better and cheaper drilling has way more applications thatn building geothermal wells. I mean we need to build tunnels all the time. Cheaper drilling probably has significant applications for the oil and gas industry too.
So if that's true, why the focus on geothermal? I mean I support research into renewables but it's a whole lot easier if, say, you can get the oil and gas industry to pay for your R&D, effectively.
My understanding is that geothermal energy production is still pretty low.
It's also worth noting that boiling water to steam and turning a turbine has inbuilt costs that you can't escape. There's only one power source that directly creates energy and that's solar. Additionally, solar has no moving parts (other than facing PV pannels towards the Sun, optionally).