Conserving energy makes sense regardless of nearby data center electricity consumption.
True. But asking schools to conserve electricity while encouraging data centers to waste it is perverse.
County with 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to 'Conserve Electricity'
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Re: County with 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to 'Conserve Electricity'
#22Interestingly, San Francisco has built no more of these AI datacenters and has seen a rate hike larger than that over the last few years. If we could at least get a few more datacenters that would be nice considering the rate hikes approved here.
First of all, the grid is interconnected. Some random city building an AI datacenter could absolutely trigger price increases in a different part of the state. Second of all, Novva Data Centers is in fact building a $500m campus. In addition to all that is that the war against Iran is causing electricity prices to spike basically everywhere. PG&E is also currently modernizing its grid and doing wildfire hardening across the state. The solar subsidies has also meant that grid subsidization costs have been shifted onto non-solar customers.
Re: County with 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to 'Conserve Electricity'
#23Maybe the county could just ask its employees to work from home so that its office electricity bill goes down to zero. A win-win solution!
Re: County with 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to 'Conserve Electricity'
#24Interestingly, San Francisco has built no more of these AI datacenters and has seen a rate hike larger than that over the last few years. If we could at least get a few more datacenters that would be nice considering the rate hikes approved here.
I might argue that we already have data centers, we just call then Colo Facilities.
Re: County with 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to 'Conserve Electricity'
#25If everyone turned off their lights 100% of the time they left their workstation, they could power those additional data centers for about one second.
not to mention you'll get much farther, faster & easier with timers on the lights than some sort of 100% voluntary participation dream.
ever been in a room of people sitting in cubicles where the lights are controlled by motion sensor to automatically turn off the lights after a set period of no motion? fun times. it took way longer to get that switch replaced than it should have
Re: County with 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to 'Conserve Electricity'
#26The ~spice~ inference must flow. Some of the data centers now run disconnected on gas turbines 24/7, which is better for electricity prices but they can be big nuisance for people living nearby.
It is also often a violation of the Clean Air Act but we don't have good regulation in place to actually hold them accountable
Re: County with 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to 'Conserve Electricity'
#27Interestingly, San Francisco has built no more of these AI datacenters and has seen a rate hike larger than that over the last few years. If we could at least get a few more datacenters that would be nice considering the rate hikes approved here.
I might argue that we already have data centers, we just call then Colo Facilities.
I'd imagine your normal Colo facility uses a lot less power than an AI data center.
Re: County with 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to 'Conserve Electricity'
#28If everyone turned off their lights 100% of the time they left their workstation, they could power those additional data centers for about one second.
Just use smart lights that feed video into an llm to check if lights should shut down.
Re: County with 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to 'Conserve Electricity'
#29This is in Virgina, which passed the Virginia Clean Economy Act in 2020. This mandated that Dominion (the power company) transition to 100% renewable energy by 2045. Personally, I think this is a good thing in the long run, but in the short run, it means that Dominion has had to invest a lot in building out renewable projects that haven't come online yet.
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab recently did an analysis on electricity prices in the US [1] and found that most of the rate increase in Virginia was attributable to the VCEA, and that load growth had a mitigating effect on price increases.
If you look at the overall report (not just Virginia), the places where electricty costs are rising the fastest are generally not the same places where lots of new datacenters are being built. It's easy to blame datacenters, but there are many factors at play here.
[1] https://emp.lbl.gov/publications/factors-influencing-recent-...
Re: County with 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to 'Conserve Electricity'
#30The text of the article indicates that the county government sent this message to all government facilities, but I suppose that doesn't make for quite as sexy a headline and a public school is technically a government facility.
I appreciate 404 media's mission but isn't there enough stupid shit existing naturally in the world for them to illuminate that we don't need to do this?