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Maryland citizens hit with $2B power grid upgrade for out-of-state AI

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Re: Maryland citizens hit with $2B power grid upgrade for out-of-state AI

#201

Post by culi »

trollbridge wrote: post #86
vjvjvjvjghv wrote: post #40

Maybe the AI guys should use the AI first to develop fusion reactors they can then use to power the data centers. I honestly think they should pay fully for the infrastructure that provides power for them. It's not fair to have regular users pay for this.

If they have to pay for all the infrastructure themselves, the current financing model does not pencil out.

Exactly how a "free market" should work. But it won't work that way because AI is considered a "national security priority" so it will always be bailed out

Re: Maryland citizens hit with $2B power grid upgrade for out-of-state AI

#202

Post by culi »

disillusioned wrote: post #96
jmyeet wrote: post #16

We've been here before [1]. In that case, extra load on the grid meant the municipality needed to purchase more power (at higher prices), which raised everybody's prices. Electricity supply is highly regulated. Prices for electricity are constrained and often set by state regulators. These are so-called "usage fees". But beyond that the utility is allowed to charge customers for infrastructure and transmissio and tho…

> (there is no benefit) This is the craziest part. We've long had publicly subsidized private projects, or corporate tax breaks given to entities with the fig leaf explanation that the projects will bring economic activity, or jobs, or some sort of long lasting, durable benefit, or even at its most craven, keep a stupid populace happy that their favorite sportsball team hasn't left their town. Datacenters do none of…

> it's an open conversation around how careful we need to be with the water usage

It's only an "open conversation" because of the complete lack of transparency electricity companies and data center companies are required to give us. Communities are expected to make these decisions without any of the data to know what they're signing up for.

What irks me the most is how prevalent the industry line about water usage "not being a big deal" is on HN. Closed loop systems are probably less than 10% of data centers! Not to mention the fact that even in closed loop systems, you still have to regularly "bleed the lines". That water builds up with the anti-freeze, anti-corrosives, and anti-fungals additives as well as other stuff they pick up along the way including PFAS. Closed loop systems are far from a perfect alternative to the open loop systems that are prevalent. They can use as much as 40% more electricity, have much higher upfront costs, and then you have to have a solution for the toxic sludge problem.

Re: Maryland citizens hit with $2B power grid upgrade for out-of-state AI

#203

Post by triceratops »

fakedang wrote: post #192
triceratops wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> even in places where almonds are traditionally grown and harvested. California grows 80% of the world's almonds. Every other place that grows almonds is practically a rounding error in the number of almonds out there.

Precisely my point. The US grows an unsustainable amount and then pushes it to places it was grown in traditionally like the Mediterranean, Western Asia and the Middle East.

How do you decide what's "unsustainable"? And what does "pushing almonds" look like exactly?

Almonds are fucking delicious and nutritious. They sell themselves.

Re: Maryland citizens hit with $2B power grid upgrade for out-of-state AI

#204

Post by robotbikes »

georgemcbay wrote: post #132
robotbikes wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of these rules happen at the regulatory level so lawmakers don't typically understand them in depth and get a lot of their explanations from utility lobbyists or the regulatory agency itself, if they even get involved or pay attention. The dramatic increases being directly linked to data centers is big enough for consumers to notice though. That's why these independent counsels are pretty important such as the…

> lawmakers don't typically understand them in depth and get a lot of their explanations from utility lobbyists or the regulatory agency itself, if they even get involved or pay attention. I think you are being far too charitable here and in most cases it is weaponized ignorance at best. Why dig into the minutia of the actual rules when you can just have the people donating money to you while benefiting from you not…

I was being diplomatic for sure, but the regulators are often also pretty much working for the utility companies, sometimes quite illegally if you look at the HB6 scandal in Ohio where the head of the PUCO Sam Randazzo took massive bribes. He never faced the charges in court because he ended his life.

Re: Maryland citizens hit with $2B power grid upgrade for out-of-state AI

#205

Post by JuniperMesos »

Ekaros wrote: post #151
JuniperMesos wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A price signal that noon is a great time to do AI inference. Unfortunately, people often want AI inference done at other times than noon, when electricity isn't negatively-priced because of abundant solar panels making it in broad sunshine.

I am sometimes wondering wouldn't the most economic thing to be to geographically distribute AI computing. Latencies can be large, but power could be cheaper if the loads are just moved around the globe as needed. This would mean that hardware sits powered off or in very low power state for larger chunk of day, but maybe that is acceptable in some scenario.

This is very likely already happening as customers of data centers doing various types of AI compute schedule their workloads to minimize their own costs.

If data center compute usage was systematically cheaper around local noon wherever in the world that data center happens to be, customers who could tolerate high latency would move their compute jobs from data center to data center as the earth spins to keep their compute happening in the cheap solar energy zone. Or maybe this is a pricing model that doesn't quite exist yet at scale, but that data center operators will introduce where and when they can as more and more solar generation for data centers comes online.

Or maybe it's not actually cost-effective because moving jobs into and out of data centers is so expensive that even the electricity/compute cost savings don't actually offset it. This is ultimately a question for the entity actually paying for the compute and responding to the price signal.

Re: Maryland citizens hit with $2B power grid upgrade for out-of-state AI

#206

Post by DANmode »

Ekaros wrote: post #151
JuniperMesos wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A price signal that noon is a great time to do AI inference. Unfortunately, people often want AI inference done at other times than noon, when electricity isn't negatively-priced because of abundant solar panels making it in broad sunshine.

I am sometimes wondering wouldn't the most economic thing to be to geographically distribute AI computing. Latencies can be large, but power could be cheaper if the loads are just moved around the globe as needed. This would mean that hardware sits powered off or in very low power state for larger chunk of day, but maybe that is acceptable in some scenario.

> I am sometimes wondering wouldn't the most economic thing to be to geographically distribute AI computing

Yeah, super-edge compute.

Like…the LLMs shipping with every computer right now? =]

Re: Maryland citizens hit with $2B power grid upgrade for out-of-state AI

#207

Post by jauntywundrkind »

TitaRusell wrote: post #197
jauntywundrkind wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The industrial use also often comes with fantastically low rates as well. Virginia finally started saying folks using >25MW need to pay something more than the incredibly cheap rates they had been given. But generally data centers have often gottem marked as industrial, and it's been incredibly fantastically advantageous to do so.

The idea was that industry would provide jobs. Big aluminium plant providing 1500 jobs for the community. Obviously with AI it doesn't work that way. The Silicon Valley sociopaths openly brag about how they want to put folks out of work.

And haven't so blatanly let the cat out of the bag, but many many many many people are very very very happy that they get to end personal computing forever for everyone, if this keeps up and supply entirely dries up for consumer channels.

Kind of a master stroke win in the war against general purpose computing.

Re: Maryland citizens hit with $2B power grid upgrade for out-of-state AI

#208

Post by julianlam »

nradov wrote: post #199
expedition32 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Netherlands banned any hyperscaler development because the grid is under pressure. And it's not fair to citizens that they can't have electricity but a datacenter can.

Is it fair to Dutch citizens that they're going to be left behind in what is effectively the next industrial revolution? The Netherlands does pretty well in other economic sectors including fossil fuels and agriculture but those aren't going to enable much future growth.

> those aren't going to enable much future growth.

What is with this obsessive need for "growth".

Re: Maryland citizens hit with $2B power grid upgrade for out-of-state AI

#210

Post by AnthonyMouse »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #174
idontwantthis wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A system where you are incentivized to give up for the rest of the month if you were to high once doesn’t make sense. I am skeptical that the description was accurate.

It doesn't really incentivize that, but it doesn't punish it either You would have to be really sure there wasn't going to be a higher peak later in the month

If the demand charge is always from 4-7PM and you have at least three hours worth of batteries at your own peak usage then your usage during that period can always be zero, because you have the other 21 hours in the day to charge them back up for tomorrow.
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