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Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

theregister.com

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Re: Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

#171

Post by gnabgib »

bawolff wrote: post #157
retrac wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quebec has a larger grid and lower rates due to its abundant hydroelectricity. Ontario's relatively high costs are from the supply mix which is about 50% nuclear, 30% hydro, 10% wind, 10% gas. Residential kWh as delivered is currently (no pun intended) about 12 US cents which is a bit high if you're used to Midwestern or Alberta coal but those in California are probably envious.

> Alberta coal Alberta doesn't have any coal power plants afaik.

Not since 2024[0].. there's still coal mines though.

[0]: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-genesee-2-off...

Re: Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

#172

Post by teamonkey »

antonvs wrote: post #104
teamonkey wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Objectively, yes. It means to consume excessive or plentiful amounts of something, and 23% of Ireland’s electricity generation capability is objectively an excessive and plentiful amount.

The characterization as “excessive” is subjective. If you disagree, what are your objective criteria for making that claim? You fundamentally can’t give a correct answer to that, because it requires defining a threshold, and that’s subjective. If people seriously think claims like this are “objective”, I weep for our collective understanding of reality.

Of course it’s excessive. Questions should be asked about any one industry using 23% of a nation’s generating capacity, when it was not built for this purpose.

Of course it’s excessive. Ireland’s electricity is not cheap or in such plentiful supply that homes are not affective by this. These data centres are driving up the electricity prices for everyone in Ireland.

Of course it’s excessive. There are only 80 datacentres that used 7.8TWh between them in 2025. That amount of power is used by only the heaviest of industries; it’s 3x more power than the UK steel industry uses, for example.

Of course it’s excessive. The amount of energy used means that more fossil fuels is being used to power them than would otherwise be necessary. Legislation has been written so that new datacentres must in future provide their own [fossil fuel] generators. This in a time of man-made climate change where we all urgently need to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. It’s not just excessive, it’s deeply irresponsible.

Re: Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

#173

Post by hunterpayne »

hunterpayne wrote: post #165
defrost wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Did you see a quote from a scientist in this article? The article cited the latest figures from Ireland's Central Statistics Office (CSO). There's little need here for Niels Bohr or a bleeding edge virologist to lean in on annual summary stats on civil infrastructure usage.

Those are not scientists. They also compute GDP.

Your post doesn't have a reply link for some reasons but here is my response. What they need is expertise in energy generation. They need to understand concepts like a duck curve, power storage and its material requirements, relative EROEI of various power generation sources and a basic understanding of when newer forms of generation are likely to be ready. For instance, they should understand that renewables need to be well sited. They need to understand that the solar albino of Ireland is (far) too low for solar PV to be effective. Things of this nature. Engineering things around energy generation and the physics of how a grid works. If you don't understand these things, you are throwing darts at a dart board when you try to provide analysis of various types of industrial infrastructure.

Re: Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

#174

Post by cma »

mrtksn wrote: post #147
cadamsdotcom wrote: post #135

Just to be contrarian: what we're talking about is "electricity use from economic activity". This should be good for Ireland but they'll need to build energy capacity to keep up. It's misplaced to be angry about datacenters themselves. There IS value being created, or people wouldn't use the tools. Construction creates jobs, manufacturing the machines in the buildings is a huge global industry; the value people gain…

Of course value is created, the problem is that the value is not created for the people who endure the issues and the pricing is apparently wrong. It is similar to building a SPAM factory somewhere people live on pork, paying higher prices for the pigs and buy all the pigs but not enough for the people who sold you the pigs to use the proceeds to increase the number of pigs or replace them with some other source and…

Not exactly the spam example, but Ireland remained a net exporter of food during the potato famine. The good farmland went to cattle and things like that for export.

Re: Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

#175

Post by alephnerd »

bawolff wrote: post #162
alephnerd wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not misappropriation. Other countries within the EU could be much more business incorporation and FDI friendly, and IDA Ireland tends to be one of the more competent trade promotion agencies within the EU. Why should Ireland undermine 13% of it's GDP [0]? Edit: can't reply > Telling American multinationals you will have them pay 0 tax isn't exactly a "tax policy" as such Ireland's corporate tax rate is 12.5% but…

> Why should Ireland undermine 13% of it's GDP Undercutting other countries on tax policy tends to piss them off. So it comes down to whether the benefits of the policy outweigh the blowback. The 13% of GDP figure can be a bit misleading as GDP from being a tax haven tends to help the average irish citizen a lot less than more traditional ecconomic activity.

> The 13% of GDP figure can be a bit misleading as GDP from being a tax haven tends to help the average irish citizen a lot less than more traditional ecconomic activity

As I pointed out, if Ireland didn't adopt it's tech FDI policy which it did in the 1990s, it would be a much poorer country today.

Going from Libyan, Soviet, and Greek to Finland level living standards in 30 years was not guaranteed, and it was Ireland's business friendly policies is what ensured it became a tech hub today and didn't fall into the middle income trap - especially in 2008-12 when Ireland was also in the midst of a Greece style economic meltdown (remember the PIGS?)

Ireland was a developing country in the 1990s, and if they executed better than then much richer Western European states like Germany, France, the UK, and Canada then so be it.

> GDP from being a tax haven tends to help the average irish citizen a lot less than more traditional ecconomic activity.

I've been using HDI which isn't severely impacted by GDP per capita.

And even then, Ireland's median household income [0] is now significantly higher than the UK [1] despite living standard in the UK having been significantly higher than Ireland's until the 2010s because of Ireland's FDI policy.

> Undercutting other countries on tax policy tends to piss them off

Other EU member states such as Poland and Czechia also match Ireland's incentives when asked, which has helped both Czechia and Poland now catch up to historically richer France, Italy, and the UK.

[0] - https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-silc/surv...

[1] - https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personal...

Re: Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

#176

Post by devindotcom »

hunterpayne wrote: post #134
dymk wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in the PNW and I pay 11c/kWh (well, I would, if I didn't have solar). Seattle is 13c, King County averages 16c. Where are you paying 5c/kWh? That's exceptionally cheap.

Near Vancouver.

Guessing Vancouver WA (just north of Portland OR) not BC (Canada). For those not familiar with the area.

Re: Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

#177

Post by cadamsdotcom »

rogerrogerr wrote: post #146
cadamsdotcom wrote: post #135

Just to be contrarian: what we're talking about is "electricity use from economic activity". This should be good for Ireland but they'll need to build energy capacity to keep up. It's misplaced to be angry about datacenters themselves. There IS value being created, or people wouldn't use the tools. Construction creates jobs, manufacturing the machines in the buildings is a huge global industry; the value people gain…

> There IS value being created, or people wouldn't use the tools. While I do think there is value being created, I think this form of argument is not as watertight as it appears at first glance. Humans are very capable of behaving irrationally. I think there is a lot of harmful, negative “work” being done by AI today. Creating fake videos for Facebook, running girlfriend bots, automated scams, etc. Even employees jus…

No doubt, there's always some bad with the good. The counter is to ask about the proportions.

It's actually a sliding scale of badness, but for the sake of argument let's pop a marker on that imaginary badness line and call everything worse than our marker "bad" and everything better than it "good". Let's also assume such objective criteria exist. This is a lot of assumptions!

Now, assuming we got this far, is the "bad" 1% of the sum? Or 90%? 99%? Because we just don't know, I'm going to make another assumption and assume it's a tiny minority.

We still sell knives even though they can stab. Mostly though, knives do other knife things. And we have police and courts to deal with the bad uses.

Re: Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

#178

Post by mvdtnz »

twelve40 wrote: post #152
rogerrogerr wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There IS value being created, or people wouldn't use the tools. While I do think there is value being created, I think this form of argument is not as watertight as it appears at first glance. Humans are very capable of behaving irrationally. I think there is a lot of harmful, negative “work” being done by AI today. Creating fake videos for Facebook, running girlfriend bots, automated scams, etc. Even employees jus…

data center = girlfriend bots = meth lab is a pretty wild connection to make.

If you had trouble following the analogy that's a you problem.

Re: Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

#179

Post by defrost »

hunterpayne wrote: post #173
hunterpayne wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are not scientists. They also compute GDP.

Your post doesn't have a reply link for some reasons but here is my response. What they need is expertise in energy generation. They need to understand concepts like a duck curve, power storage and its material requirements, relative EROEI of various power generation sources and a basic understanding of when newer forms of generation are likely to be ready. For instance, they should understand that renewables need to…

So, you want a different article then.

This article reports that Irish data centres use a particular percentage of the countries power.

> What they need is expertise in energy generation.

Okay, so an actual Electrical Engineer with grid scale experience.

> They need to understand concepts like a duck curve, power storage and its material requirements, relative EROEI of various power generation sources and a basic understanding of when newer forms of generation are likely to be ready.

Many people with a STEM background understand these things .. they are not generally called "scientists" in Commonwealth English.

Re: Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

#180

Post by hinkley »

thin_carapace wrote: post #164
hinkley wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's obvious from 'all nuance is lost' that it does not matter, at all. You're inviting collateral damage, as I already said.

the grandparent commentor provided examples to illustrate 1 idea. you took one of those examples and showed how it could be used to illustrate another idea. thats fair enough. in your second comment you continued drilling this point without expounding upon it and without referring to the original topic. hence it seems you aren't interested in the overall conversation, rather whatever point you are trying to make. im…

Okay, fair enough. But once we stop doing things entirely because we are jealous of how some people use it, everything gets a bit dimmer.

I'm all for pricing externalities in. There are some obvious ways to do that with plastic surgeons on scholarships. There are ways to do that with natural resources and power generation and distribution. There's also perhaps space for making deals with the government where load shedding occurs in the data centers, not unlike how the power companies deal with foundries and such.

(what was this about getting muted?)

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