Solar radiation, ultimately (wind heats air, air expands, that creates a pressure differential which ultimately caused wind).

Maybe you‘re thinking of tidal power plants? Tides are gravitationally caused, and as far as I know tapping into them infinitesimally changes Earth‘s rotation (and to some extent probably also Earths and the Moon‘s orbit).

Well I was thinking of the geothermal energy that Quaise is pretending to extract.

Geothermal energy comes from a mixture of radioactive decay and from gravity pressuring the Earth's core into gradually solidifying over the course of billions of years.

I also read that Quaise value proposal is drilling a 20km deep hole but once you reach there, how do you transform that into usable energy? Push water to extract vapor?

I'm also curious how they would deal with rock deformation as it reaches the point of becoming less solid and more squishy. There would need to be a mechanism to maintain hole integrity post-drilling.

To your question, I'm wondering if they simply pump down water and extract resulting steam once it reaches the point of vaporization? The steam condensers and everything else are already built on-site for coal generation.

One difficulty would be handling any accumulated minerals that got into the steam loop from interaction with the rock in the hole. Unlike traditional closed-loop steam generator, an open system would pick up contaminants and eventually cause scaling.

Yes pump water down, extract supercritical steam coming out and then just use a regular turbine.

Just curious, is this process performed in alternate phases (pump water, wait for the vapor ) or is it done at the same time with different pipes in the same hole?