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As a novel geothermal heat transfer technology, the super-long gravity heat pipe (SLGHP) demonstrates great potential for the efficient exploitation of deep geothermal energy. Despite the rapid advances made to the SLGHP technology, its operational characteristics remain to be fully investigated. In this study, the underlying phenomenological mechanisms of the SLGHP are compared with those of normal-size gravity heat pipes (NSGHPs), and the operational characteristics of the SLGHP are analyzed in view of its distinctive geometric features. It is noted that the thermal resistance caused by the vapor flow is negligible in the NSGHPs, while it dominates the overall thermal resistance of the SLGHP. The dominance of the vapor flow thermal resistance allows making the one-dimensional simplification (along the pipe length direction) in the mathematical model of the SLGHP geothermal energy extraction system …