I had pondered myself a rough plan of action to start with solar, as its cheap to power for one person upwards, and easy to add more panels/capacity as you get more people.
At some point (It might be around say 100 people, no real thought has gone into what that number might be!) then rely on combined heat and power systems that burn fast growing timber (Such as willow trees.), as this technology is well understood, fairly cheap and basic, and would allow for larger population sizes. (I'm also thinking multible plants so when one needs to be down for maintence, you still have enough generating capacity to go around.)
Keep the solar part, in case the CHP system fails for emergency backup, as well as say day to day use anyhow. (eg. forest fire wipes out your fuel..)
With geothermal coming along later once you have a large enough population that can afford to fund it, and also build again more than one plant, so when maintence time comes, you still have enough capacity to go around.
From what limited information I have read, geothermal does look price wise promising, and I reckon worth investigating, especially if it can work in many locations, and will be more NIMBY friendly than most other kinds of power generation. (Though I have seen the 'earthquake' argument thrown up against it, so that would need some careless looking into or otherwise one risks green groups opposing it on those grounds. (Much like how they objected against a bio-fuel power station at the end of my road, where as a few years ago they wanted it!)
Wind is not very NIMBY friendly..
I think its important to factor in the NIMBY factor in ones choices, as whilst something maybe technically better, its no use if people object to it and you can't get permission to build it!
Geothermal I see as having good potentional for 24/7 base load generation without needing power storage, little pollution worries (Though someone did say, what about when the powertube leaks and pollutes the local water table.. though my first thought that as it will be 2 miles down or so, I don't imagine offhand much will make it to the local water table, and secondary that the amount of toxic materials (I don't even know if the stuff is toxic!) is likely to be dilluted to such an extent as to not be worth worrying about. But we would need to be sure on the figures there before using that as an effective arguement.)
)
