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DOJ claims xAI's gas turbines are a matter of 'national and energy security'

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Re: DOJ claims xAI's gas turbines are a matter of 'national and energy security'

#61

Post by stymaar »

trhway wrote: post #30
x______________ wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The company, which is now a division of SpaceX, is likely to buy more generators in the coming months or years. In SpaceX’s IPO filing, the company said that it will buy another $2.8 billion worth of gas turbines to power its AI data centers over the next three years. Of that, at least $2 billion are earmarked for “mobile gas turbines.” SpaceX, the new Tesla... who saw that coming? :(

I'd not be surprised if SpaceX/Elon will start manufacturing those turbines. They do have necessary engineering and manufacturing chops.

They will probably start a program in this direction, but don't expect it to convert to actual manufacturing before a few years. It's not exactly the kind of thing you can do in a month.

Re: DOJ claims xAI's gas turbines are a matter of 'national and energy security'

#62

Post by westurner »

graemep wrote: post #58
westurner wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's also turquoise hydrogen; H Hydrogen from Methane CH4. But then what do you do with the CO2?

There is no CO2. It produces carbon instead.

o-CNT would be biodegradable.

Ironically, it looks like you have to add oxygen back to that to make it worth money:

Public link: Commercial Methane Pyrolysis Overview https://gemini.google.com/share/918e7883df8a :

> Because the economic model of pyrolysis requires selling the solid carbon byproduct, local carbon black prices dictate profitability

; per/kg:

> Carbon Black: $1.20 - $1.80

> o-CNTs: $150 - $300+

Re: DOJ claims xAI's gas turbines are a matter of 'national and energy security'

#63

Post by Gud »

charcircuit wrote: post #60
Gud wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, “mobile generators” are not constantly powered at one location. Typically they are unused in storage and brought to location without power. It could be a warehouse with sensitive equipment (freezers etc), a hospital in need of extra power etc. This is clearly a case of abuse and people should go to jail for wrecking the planet. I work in the energy sector and I’ve done routine maintenance on backup generators, in…

>No, “mobile generators” are not constantly powered at one location. xAI temporarily has these generators at the location. It's not meant to be constantly be there.

And how long is “temporary”?

They are normally used during power outages or during construction(days, not weeks).

Re: DOJ claims xAI's gas turbines are a matter of 'national and energy security'

#64

Post by stymaar »

charcircuit wrote: post #56
phtrivier wrote: post #53

It's too bad that AI is only going to solve climate change and cure cancer, it would have been great if it could also cure asthma and solve rampant corruption. Anyway, now that half of HN readers are SpaceX shareholder, directly or indirectly, how do we exercise the supreme power over the company, granted to us by capitalism, to ask the board to replace the turbines by another form of energy production in line with s…

That half of HN readers will only have Class A stock which does not hold enough power to overcome Musk's Class B stock that he owns. But you don't need capitalism to ask the board to do something. You can ask Musk on X.

> You can ask Musk on X.

He'll only listen to you if you're a racist conspiracy theorist though.

Re: DOJ claims xAI's gas turbines are a matter of 'national and energy security'

#65

Post by stymaar »

jmyeet wrote: post #37
holistio wrote: post #14

It's a matter of time before people start rioting against these national and energy security matters also known as data centres.

And watch them get charged with terrorism. Anti-nuke protestors who did no real harm were charged under 18 USC 1361 and faced up to 25 years in prison [1]. “Sabotage” here means over $1.000 in damage. [1]: https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2019/11/20/...

Good luck catching people using FPV drones to commit these “sabotages” though.

Re: DOJ claims xAI's gas turbines are a matter of 'national and energy security'

#66

Post by stymaar »

trhway wrote: post #24

"Grok is one of four AI models that support “mission-critical operations,” such as its recent strikes in Iran." That probably one of the reasons of such a glorious success there.

“Iranian schoolgirls are world famous for their feminist protests, hence this girl school is a high priority target to protect the world from wokeness”

Re: DOJ claims xAI's gas turbines are a matter of 'national and energy security'

#68

Post by charcircuit »

Gud wrote: post #63
charcircuit wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>No, “mobile generators” are not constantly powered at one location. xAI temporarily has these generators at the location. It's not meant to be constantly be there.

And how long is “temporary”? They are normally used during power outages or during construction(days, not weeks).

That is knowledge internal to xAI.

Re: DOJ claims xAI's gas turbines are a matter of 'national and energy security'

#70

Post by bob1029 »

I can assure HN that they want to be on the grid as quickly as possible. Burning half a million dollars per day in single cycle turbines will eventually cause trouble for accounting.

Running on exactly one kind of fuel is also a bit risky for a few reasons. The grid offers a significantly more diverse fuel mix. It might occasionally be more expensive, but it is also much more reliable.

The grid also offers significantly better fault handling & inertia. An order of magnitude better or more. All those aeroderivative turbines together don't make for much of a brick wall. They are quite fragile compared to what you would find in the turbine hall of a combined cycle plant. GPU load tends to be non-linear and coordinated. To the other side of a circuit it could look like a fault condition when a large cluster fires up a training batch.

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