61–70 of 169 posts
Fascinating they're going this direction when solar and batteries are so cheap in Texas... Nearly all new additions to the grid are solar, wind, and storage right now on Texas' grid. Not because of Texas regulations, but because Texas' grid is one of the few grids where generation decisions are all made by independent investors trying to make money. Especially with the shortage in gas turbine manufacturing, very surp…
With all the fracking in the USA, literally exponential growth, one of the things they do is gas burn off for months, sometimes years at all the sites Why not use all that wasted heat energy to power all these datacenters? (and why not build the datacenters at the Bakken formation) You can see the burnoff from SPACE and it's for months at a time at each location, tell me that does nothing to global temperatures? (loo…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Is it, though? Yes. There is no point in waiting for interconnection when you can just... not do that, and do all your generation behind the meter, with complete control of the generation to match your load. Solar wants an interconnect so they can sell off surplus; with gas you just turn the dial down to meet the load and walk away. The clock is running on the datacenter goldrush. 70-90% of the capex window is goin…
I'm not saying wait for an interconnection, I'm saying take a project that already has a fully developed plan, that's waiting for interconnection, and build the DC right there next to it, beef up the battery component of the plan and go to town. Interconnection happens some time in the future, giving far more financial opportunities for everyone, but in the interim the electricity goes fully to the DC.
[flagged]
Microsoft says [1] they're going to be carbon negative by 2030. Hard to see them doing that while deploying gigawatts of new fossil fuels. [1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/corporate-responsibility/sus...
Its easy, they are going to use fancy accounting to make it come true. Produce a ton of carbon, then buy a cheap, under-priced carbon credit to make it be a zero.
Sorry, but who in his right mind, signs contracts for 20 years - could you have imagined the world today 20 years ago? No and no. All one should do is sign snippet contracts of 5 years with the offer of an option to predefined condition. Split it into 4 sequences with a renewal.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And it takes all of 30seconds to look up instead of posting sarcastic hyperbole that the company is trying to greenwash their product by name when it’s a 100 year old company name. Confusing as it may be for people like yourself, I don’t think it really defends posting sarcasm that is not based in reality.
It's 2026 - they should change their fucking name.
Name recognition matters especially to people in particular segments.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
West Texas is like Costco for natural gas. There are cases where the fields can produce more than the pipelines can carry away. If you put your gigantic gas turbines right next to the fields you can obtain access to some extremely cheap fuel. They might even pay you to burn it sometimes. Negative gas prices are a thing.
West Texas is also a basket of methane leakage -- see CarbonMapper et al
The current natural gas price in West Texas (the WaHa hub, north of Coyanosa, TX) is negative. And has been for a while. The price peaked (dipped?) to -$9/MCF a couple months ago. That means gas producers had to pay $9 per MCF for it to be taken away. Oil in the Permian comes with gas, a lot of it, so to produce oil, you need to get rid of gas. Wells I'm familiar with have 4000-5000 cubic feet of gas per barrel of oi…
This might make sense for oil producers to get rid of their natural gas, which is nearly a waste material, but I'm struggling to understand how it makes sense for Microsoft. Despite the cheap natural gas, and an abundance of investors and builders with natural gas expertise, in the competitive electricity generation market everybody is deploying solar and batteries in west Texas because it's still more profitable tha…
With enough batteries they might get through the night, but seasonal shortages are much harder to handle that way.
I bet a carbon tax on data centers would be popular if the Democrats get back in.