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County with 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to 'Conserve Electricity'

404media.co

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Re: County with 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to 'Conserve Electricity'

#41

Post by toomuchtodo »

jonas21 wrote: post #29

This 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 ele…

So don't allow data centers to connect until enough clean energy has been brought online to meet their needs without impacting cost or availability for retail ratepayers. It's easy really. Say no.

It's so strange to me that the argument previously was "we don't have enough energy generation for EVs and heat pumps to electrify and decarbon" but data centers are thought of as must run load that everyone has to suffer in some way to enable (through increased rates or risk of blackouts), when they have very little positive impact for everyone except a small minority investing in them.

> It's easy to blame datacenters, but there are a lot of factors at play here.

It is because they are the problem. We need as much clean energy as quickly as possible to mitigate climate change, we do not need data centers, broadly speaking.

(if you replaced all of the farmland/ag land, the size of the state of Oregon, harvested for ethanol with solar, you would have more electrical generation than all current US electrical generation combined as of this comment; this is simply a question of will, proven by China's solar PV deployment rates [installing ~90-100GW of solar PV per month])

Re: County with 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to 'Conserve Electricity'

#42

Post by Dr_Emann »

cwillu wrote: post #37
sokoloff wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You dropped the time component from the first, so yes, the result is incomparable. “Power spent on lighting worstations while vacant” is energy

I don't think so, "while vacant" is an infinite amount of time, if you look infinitely far into the future.

Re: County with 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to 'Conserve Electricity'

#43

Post by [deleted] »

philipwhiuk wrote: post #33
jabroni_salad wrote: post #30

The 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?

> I appreciate 404 media's mission but isn't there enough stupid shit existing naturally in the world Like 37 data centres in a small rural county?

[deleted]

Re: County with 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to 'Conserve Electricity'

#44

Post by Kamq »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #41
jonas21 wrote: post #29

This 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 ele…

So don't allow data centers to connect until enough clean energy has been brought online to meet their needs without impacting cost or availability for retail ratepayers. It's easy really. Say no. It's so strange to me that the argument previously was "we don't have enough energy generation for EVs and heat pumps to electrify and decarbon" but data centers are thought of as must run load that everyone has to suffer i…

Their post said that load growth had a mitigating effect on prices. Not letting the data centers come online would, presumably, result in higher prices.

That seems slightly weird, but that sounds like there's some large fixed costs that they can spread over the entire subscriber base, so the extra data centers are picking up some of those fixed costs.

Re: County with 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to 'Conserve Electricity'

#45

Post by toomuchtodo »

Kamq wrote: post #44
toomuchtodo wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So don't allow data centers to connect until enough clean energy has been brought online to meet their needs without impacting cost or availability for retail ratepayers. It's easy really. Say no. It's so strange to me that the argument previously was "we don't have enough energy generation for EVs and heat pumps to electrify and decarbon" but data centers are thought of as must run load that everyone has to suffer i…

Their post said that load growth had a mitigating effect on prices. Not letting the data centers come online would, presumably, result in higher prices. That seems slightly weird, but that sounds like there's some large fixed costs that they can spread over the entire subscriber base, so the extra data centers are picking up some of those fixed costs.

Agreed that in some situations, on some US electric grids (ISOs/TSOs), data centers are absorbing their electrical supply costs that would otherwise be externalities. This is good, I fully support this. This is not uniform unfortunately, and remains to be solved for in totality imho. I take no issue if we get to a point where the AI bubble pops and we're left with net new electrical infrastructure that continues to provide benefit decades into the future while the data centers sit silent (similar to the "fiber boom bust glut" at the turn of the century). I take issue with the AI bubble costs being pushed citizens already, broadly speaking, unable to make ends meet merely out of a desire to speculate (and no one can be sure how long this exuberance and hype cycle is going to last; as long as it lasts, humans who need electricity at a reasonable cost are at risk).

TLDR Humans need electricity to live, data center loads are a luxury that can wait for power to be provided, when available.

Re: County with 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to 'Conserve Electricity'

#46

Post by skywhopper »

jabroni_salad wrote: post #30

The 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?

What is your complaint exactly? Is it better that this includes all government services? I think most folks would not immediately think of schools if the headline said “county government buildings”. I think it’s a reasonable editorial choice to emphasize school buildings in the headline.

Re: County with 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to 'Conserve Electricity'

#47

Post by GuestFAUniverse »

emsign wrote: post #19
scottndecker wrote: post #5

If everyone turned off their lights 100% of the time they left their workstation, they could power those additional data centers for about one second.

"Who needs public schools anyway? I pay my kid's teachers salary directly."

And the rest has AI. All is fine. /s

Re: County with 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to 'Conserve Electricity'

#48

Post by freediddy »

malshe wrote: post #17
arjie wrote: post #8

Interestingly, 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 love California and occasionally think about moving there. But the cost of living considerations bring me back to reality. Despite all its problems, it's difficult to leave Texas due to the low cost of living (and HEB!)

I pay over $0.51/kWh in electricity thanks to PG&E.

Re: County with 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to 'Conserve Electricity'

#49

Post by freediddy »

The greed with which the tech companies and data center providers are consuming electricity will be their downfall. By trying to make a few extra bucks by passing on some of the costs to consumers, it will trigger a huge political backlash that will screw them all. The fact they don't realize this is greed and hubris on their part.

Re: County with 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to 'Conserve Electricity'

#50

Post by toast0 »

philipwhiuk wrote: post #33
jabroni_salad wrote: post #30

The 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?

> I appreciate 404 media's mission but isn't there enough stupid shit existing naturally in the world Like 37 data centres in a small rural county?

It's not that rural, it's in the Richmond Metro Area. A quick look at satellite view shows suburbia, not rural, but I wouldn't be too surprised if there's some parts of the county with larger lots. Virginia has good connectivity for data centers, so I'm not surprised there's lots on the outskirts of their capital. I bet they've got at least 37 warehouses too.

The whole thing seems pretty overblown: County where energy prices are up 25% sends a memo asking employees to conserve electricity doesn't seem worth writing about. If prices are up 25%, I bet the datacenter guys are also working on efficiency. The county isn't asking datacenter peeps to conserve energy, because the county isn't paying their electricity bill.

From the headline, I thought this was going to be schools that signed up to participate in demand response in return for reduced electric rates are being asked to reduce their demand. Growing up in socal, most of the schools were on demand response programs, and sometimes we'd have reduced lighting as a result. I wouldn't expect a lot of datacenters to participate in demand response programs, so the angle would be 'the schools have to turn off their lights, but the datacenters don't do anything' ... ignoring the cost savings the schools signed up for; some datacenters could participate though --- large operators can move traffic and shutdown, idle or limit power for most of the servers, or can switch to local generation; but facilities for small hosting / colocation probably don't have enough insight into their customer loads to move traffic and might not want to run their generators.

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