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

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

#261

Post by rsynnott »

spwa4 wrote: post #56
infinite_spin wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Dump #datacenters - they are not critical Internet infrastructure! what is the alternative? I don't think self hosting is a robust/defensible option for a majority of internet services

Nobody hosts datacenters in Ireland because of capacity reasons. It's not a good location for power, people or connectivity. They host them there for tax reasons. You can bet your firstborn these datacenters are only the exact size that is the minimum allowed by tax law, not a square millimeter more. Yes, datacenters are critical internet infrastructure. But in Ireland they're more like a sailing ship with the sails…

> Nobody hosts datacenters in Ireland because of capacity reasons. It's not a good location for power, people or connectivity.

It is, ah, probably about the best location if you want connectivity to both the US and continental Europe (and also, oddly, Japan, via an arctic cable). A big fraction of total transatlantic connectivity goes through Ireland, and there's substantial redundancy.

However, realistically, today datacenters are mostly built in Ireland because there are already datacenters in Ireland. There are no significant tax benefits to building them in Ireland vs most other countries, power is more expensive, and planning is more difficult (a lot of proposed datacenters for Ireland are now being refused planning, due to either grid constraints or dirty backup power arrangements). But, say, eu-west-1 is the biggest European AWS region, so why, as an Amazon customer, wouldn't you use it? (This is also a thing with us-east-1, which I think is still their biggest region despite their attempts to nudge people away from it to east-2...)

Expansion by _existing_ datacenter operators, who came in ages ago when the connectivity advantage was more of a big deal, seems to be the major driver. I don't think anyone who doesn't already have datacenters in Ireland is trying to build them; these days there are other locations with appropriate connectivity, cheaper power, and less fussy regulators.

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

#262

Post by Kon5ole »

keane wrote: post #114
Kon5ole wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Journalism is allowed to have an opinion, that doesn't make it propaganda. How do you figure? Surely it becomes propaganda for the opinion? Journalists are not supposed to let opinions show in their reporting, that’s why editorials exist.

“I have given up on American journalism. The decline of the American press has long been obvious, and my time is too valuable to waste in an effort to supply the ‘man in the street’ with his daily quota of clichés, gossip, and erotic tripe. There is another concept of journalism, which you may or may not be familiar with. It’s engraved on a bronze plaque on the southeast corner of the Times Tower in New York City.” —…

"When you’re young, you look at television and think, There’s a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that’s not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want."

--Steve Jobs

I think the same goes for newspapers. They are businesses that make money from giving people what they want, and like all businesses they eventually care primarily about making money. Whatever else they were founded to care about is secondary at best.

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

#263

Post by rsynnott »

hunterpayne wrote: post #76
testing22321 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweet. Start building TODAY and it will be done in nothing less than 20 years for nothing less than $20 BILLION. What should they do in the meantime?

Sure, $1B for the plant and $19B for the lawyers. Korea and China build them in 4 years for about $1B each. This is entirely self-inflicted by people who are completely scientifically illiterate.

> Korea and China build them in 4 years for about $1B each.

China seems to do 7 years _build time_ at ~$3bn/GW. So you're probably looking at at least a decade project start to end. Also, they're primarily using a reactor that isn't licensed in Europe and won't be anytime soon. The only Chinese plant using a European-licensed reactor type (EPR) took a decade to build (still faster than European builds of the same reactor, but not what you'd call quick).

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

#264

Post by rsynnott »

mrb wrote: post #78
testing22321 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweet. Start building TODAY and it will be done in nothing less than 20 years for nothing less than $20 BILLION. What should they do in the meantime?

Or Ireland can import electricity from France TODAY as we export on average 10 GW continuously, and most of it is already generated by nuclear :-)

We are about to start doing that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_Interconnector

But it is in itself fairly non-trivial; HVDC cables that long are difficult.

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

#265

Post by rsynnott »

tialaramex wrote: post #154
mrb wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or Ireland can import electricity from France TODAY as we export on average 10 GW continuously, and most of it is already generated by nuclear :-)

If you were to look at a map you'd see that Ireland is on the other side of a bigger island. Sure enough France exports up to about 4GW to the UK, and the UK exports up to about 1GW to Ireland. Right now, it being the middle of the night here, France sends us about 2.5GW and we sent Ireland about 500 MW. Electricity being fungible by nature it doesn't really mean anything to say that's French electricity when it reac…

> France sends us about 2.5GW and we sent Ireland about 500 MW.

It's also a two-way flow; while UKIreland transmission tends to net out to UK->Ireland, it's fairly variable; to a large extent whichever side currently has too much wind is the donor.

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

#266

Post by distances »

pbgcp2026 wrote: post #209
pbgcp2026 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- To fix these two planks you take a hammer and a nail ... - NO! My uncle hit himself with a hammer real hard last year. It is "is a non-starter". Can we use glue? - Yes, it will be more expensive, less efficient ... - NO! My niece inhaled glue last year. It is "is a non-starter". Can we ...

Exhibit 1: Why West will lose on AI – they will run out of power. LOL. Thanks to commenters. (teachrdan and hinkley) Yes, I know the reasoning. I am one of those who is against nuclear power stations, Chernobyl and Fukushima are too vivid. But . If we don't "re-industrialise" the West, we die in a cold and darkness. Literally. We already killed marine ecosystem in Black and Caspian seas. Moving as planned in Gulf. Wi…

> With amount of oil tankers just burning out in the open the "carbon emission" goals seem like a joke

If you refer to the burning Russian tankers in the Azov, that should reduce emissions. The carried oil would've been used internally in Russia, so it's better to just burn it before it gets used, the same emissions would've been there anyway. And burning the tankers and refineries restricts Russian oil production, which is is a win both for the environment and mankind alike.

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

#267

Post by onel »

HtmlProgrammer wrote: post #60

My electricity costs 34 cent per Kw/h and I can’t afford solar panels or a renovation to air to water heating while the government insists we shouldn’t use oil / coal anymore nor logs or turf to heat our homes edit: I live in Ireland

For people outside of Ireland: these rates are not the norm. They are usually around 20-22. Can go down 17 if on special plans, or even 12 if you have an electric car.

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

#268

Post by onel »

fabian2k wrote: post #14
thegrim33 wrote: post #2

They chose to add the word "guzzle". They could have just written "Irish datacenters now use 23% of the country's electricity". But they made the editorial decision to add in "guzzle". What's the word for this type of propaganda, where they add in some sort of adjective that wasn't needed, in order to prime the reader on how to think/feel, rather than just objectively reporting the facts? What are the odds that the c…

Journalism is allowed to have an opinion, that doesn't make it propaganda.

Not really, no. It is one of the most important attributes of good journalism that you have to be as impartial. That's why papers have separate sections for Opinions

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

#269

Post by onel »

thegrim33 wrote: post #2

They chose to add the word "guzzle". They could have just written "Irish datacenters now use 23% of the country's electricity". But they made the editorial decision to add in "guzzle". What's the word for this type of propaganda, where they add in some sort of adjective that wasn't needed, in order to prime the reader on how to think/feel, rather than just objectively reporting the facts? What are the odds that the c…

I agree that this title is very opinionated. If the country would have created enough electricity, the percentage wouldn't be a problem

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

#270

Post by psd1 »

hinkley wrote: post #189
teachrdan wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is supposed to be a joke, but you are making a category error if you conflate hitting your thumb with a hammer with running a nuclear power plant. One of the problems with nuclear is that, for practical and security reasons, you are dependent on an authoritarian regime to run the plant -- a plant that will be inherently not-transparent for the same reasons. That means you have to trust the authorities in…

And if anyone is wrong, they will only have to deal with it for 20-50 years, then they die and the next 5000 administrations have to deal with the literal fallout. If your uncle hitting his thumb meant everyone in his line and all of his neighbors would have a flat thumb for the next million years then the government would absolutely involve itself in hammer design and operational safety guidelines.

Fallout came from Chernobyl and Fat Boy. There is no fallout from a reactor that doesn't explode, and Chernobyl exploded for human reasons rather than structural ones.

Yes, waste lasts a long time. That's mostly in the form of a pond of slightly clicky water. The fear is overblown. See http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2026/ph241/teixeira2/

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