Up to a point, but you'd still need a story for dealing with the surplus. Also, if you want to actually turn heat into electricity with a turbine, then you nee

Up to a point, but you'd still need a story for dealing with the surplus. Also, if you want to actually turn heat into electricity with a turbine, then you need the ability to heat and cool your medium repeatedly [1]— locating power plants on shorelines is very convenient for this, since you have a heat source from your combustion, nuclear reaction, whatever, and then a functionally bottomless cooling source in the water. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rankine_cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rankine_cycle