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US Grid Constraints: Towards 40GW+ of Behind-the-Meter Datacenter by 2028?

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Re: US Grid Constraints: Towards 40GW+ of Behind-the-Meter Datacenter by 2028?

#21

Post by rapsey »

logicchains wrote: post #20
rapsey wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a defeatist EU attitude that leads to the worse outcomes. Expensive power and a failing economy. There is money now for a huge investment boom, which is what is happening in the US and China. With EU failing completely.

>There is money now for a huge investment boom Not in western Europe, because they spent almost all their excess economic output over the past few decades on welfare/transfer payments.

That was my point. We in the EU are destroying ourselves. The US is racing ahead and investing in all kinds of power generation technologies.

Re: US Grid Constraints: Towards 40GW+ of Behind-the-Meter Datacenter by 2028?

#22

Post by cloudie78 »

trhway wrote: post #4
alex_duf wrote: post #3

What an absolute ecological disaster. If bubble there is, now would be a great time for it to pop.

Alternatively the crisis can be used to accelerate right development - quickly build up solar farms and transmission lines. Both of these can be done quickly if there were a political will. Yet, that will is missing. So, we're talking 40GW. Lets see what China does: https://energyandcleanair.org/china-energy-and-emissions-tre... "In the first two months of 2026, China added: 32.5 gigawatts (GW) of solar power capacit…

Right off the top of my head, to power a 500MW Datacenter we need:

2.2-2.5 GWdc solar capacity which at 600W/panel amounts to 14-17sq mi plus additional 8-12GWh of storage to deal with nighttime, two-three days of cloud cover is not going to work with these numbers.

Ballpark 5-7BN$

Nuclear otoh, 1GW continuous - gives constant power, badly managed first of a kind (or first one after decades) build will be at around 10-15BN and that’ll cover two 500MW data centres.

There’s also the second/third degree order effects nuclear power stations have of creating jobs and industrial manufacturing demand. To run a nuclear power station you need to employ 1000 people (engineers plus support staff) - that’s a small town’s worth of adults. So you’ll need a town with a school, hospitals, stores - those need staffing as well.

Unfortunately building nuclear is not something that’s currently a feasible path as it requires patient capital and long term vision and planning.

So gas turbines it is at around ~1BN$

Re: US Grid Constraints: Towards 40GW+ of Behind-the-Meter Datacenter by 2028?

#24

Post by trhway »

clarionbell wrote: post #12
trhway wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatively the crisis can be used to accelerate right development - quickly build up solar farms and transmission lines. Both of these can be done quickly if there were a political will. Yet, that will is missing. So, we're talking 40GW. Lets see what China does: https://energyandcleanair.org/china-energy-and-emissions-tre... "In the first two months of 2026, China added: 32.5 gigawatts (GW) of solar power capacit…

I like how balanced their energy mix is. It is very obvious that China is optimizing for capacity and availability. There isn't really a push for clean energy sources for political, or climate, reasons. They are deployed when it makes sense, backed up by robust coal and nuclear sources. In Europe, we approach energy generation as a political, or climate problem. We are building solar and wind power sources, not to ma…

>I like how balanced their energy mix is. It is very obvious that China is optimizing for capacity and availability. There isn't really a push for clean energy sources for political, or climate, reasons. They are deployed when it makes sense, backed up by robust coal and nuclear sources.

yes, they don't seem to fall for the "solar is unstable" trap and recognize new reality - the solar + wind smoothed by nuclear/gas is the new baseline

To the comment on the coal below : not really. You don't need that much as a smoothing capacity.

Re: US Grid Constraints: Towards 40GW+ of Behind-the-Meter Datacenter by 2028?

#25

Post by ZeroGravitas »

Humorist2290 wrote: post #19

Interesting analysis. In it they say Worse, the burden [generating energy] increasingly falls on the buyer [data center developers] I don't believe this is worse, but appropriate. The grid is a shared resource, used by enterprise and individuals. If some class of consumers demand an outsized share of that resource, they should pay an outsized share of its maintenance and development. I don't see that happening. It's…

When the first wave of these datacenter stories came out, the utilities complained that they couldn't finance the work because the data centers refused to commit to paying for them over the longer term, leaving other ratepayers on the hook for the investment.

This seems to further confirm that, though now the data centers are being portrayed as the victims in this.

The sentence immediately following your quote:

> securing grid-connected power now often requires developers to post substantial letters of credit, security deposits, or sign take-or-pay commitments to fund the generation built to serve their load.

The question is, if they couldn't commit to paying the utility, how can they finance building their own independant grid equivalent? Did they find some other sucker to take on the risk?

Re: US Grid Constraints: Towards 40GW+ of Behind-the-Meter Datacenter by 2028?

#26

Post by boelboel »

trhway wrote: post #24
clarionbell wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like how balanced their energy mix is. It is very obvious that China is optimizing for capacity and availability. There isn't really a push for clean energy sources for political, or climate, reasons. They are deployed when it makes sense, backed up by robust coal and nuclear sources. In Europe, we approach energy generation as a political, or climate problem. We are building solar and wind power sources, not to ma…

>I like how balanced their energy mix is. It is very obvious that China is optimizing for capacity and availability. There isn't really a push for clean energy sources for political, or climate, reasons. They are deployed when it makes sense, backed up by robust coal and nuclear sources. yes, they don't seem to fall for the "solar is unstable" trap and recognize new reality - the solar + wind smoothed by nuclear/gas…

You mean + coal, they don't have a meaningful amount of nuclear (just under 5% of electricity mix and 2% of energy). 50% of electricity is coal.

Re: US Grid Constraints: Towards 40GW+ of Behind-the-Meter Datacenter by 2028?

#27

Post by Tade0 »

alex_duf wrote: post #3

What an absolute ecological disaster. If bubble there is, now would be a great time for it to pop.

As an (eastern) European this is to me a greater concern than the Russian invasion in terms of availability of gas for the winter, considering how so many of those places run on gas turbines.

Putin only has a certain amount of the resource on tap and sells it to someone eventually. Meanwhile data centers will eat up whatever you throw at them at any price, especially that in principle they don't need to be connected to the grid, so I imagine setting up their power supply must take months at the longest.

Re: US Grid Constraints: Towards 40GW+ of Behind-the-Meter Datacenter by 2028?

#28

Post by rapsey »

Tade0 wrote: post #27
alex_duf wrote: post #3

What an absolute ecological disaster. If bubble there is, now would be a great time for it to pop.

As an (eastern) European this is to me a greater concern than the Russian invasion in terms of availability of gas for the winter, considering how so many of those places run on gas turbines. Putin only has a certain amount of the resource on tap and sells it to someone eventually. Meanwhile data centers will eat up whatever you throw at them at any price, especially that in principle they don't need to be connected…

The US has incredible gas reserves. Much more that can be exported with ships.

Re: US Grid Constraints: Towards 40GW+ of Behind-the-Meter Datacenter by 2028?

#29

Post by parineum »

Humorist2290 wrote: post #19

Interesting analysis. In it they say Worse, the burden [generating energy] increasingly falls on the buyer [data center developers] I don't believe this is worse, but appropriate. The grid is a shared resource, used by enterprise and individuals. If some class of consumers demand an outsized share of that resource, they should pay an outsized share of its maintenance and development. I don't see that happening. It's…

> The grid is a shared resource, used by enterprise and individuals. If some class of consumers demand an outsized share of that resource, they should pay an outsized share of its maintenance and development. I don't see that happening.

That makes sense up until you realize that the data centers aren't just burning watts for fun. They're providing a service that is in extremely high demand to a very high amount of those other electricity customers.

> It's as if trucking companies flooded the highways with so many trucks that people couldn't commute to work anymore.

And those trucks are delivering products to the stores those commuters shop at.

Re: US Grid Constraints: Towards 40GW+ of Behind-the-Meter Datacenter by 2028?

#30

Post by pu_pe »

adornKey wrote: post #17
PunchyHamster wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

solar farms are worst kind of power source for constant loads like datacenters running AI training

Why? Unlike loads involving a real physical process there is absolutely no need for AI-training to be constant.

If you invest into chips that deprecate in value really fast, not utilizing them to their full capacity because of power constraints would be counter productive.
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