Oracle could face $7B collateral bill for Wisconsin data centre • Hacker News Board

Re: Oracle could face $7B collateral bill for Wisconsin data centre

#91

Post by mgerdts » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 6:50 PM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #67

mike_hearn wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On Earth it has to be fossil fuels. With solar you can't do it. I haven't done the calculations myself so, full disclosure, AI work ahead. But I asked GPT 5.6 how big a solar and battery farm would have to be to power a one gigawatt datacenter such that it could ride out a few cloudy days in a row (this is far below the reliability bar). Its answer is you'd need an "absurdly large battery" and a solar farm of over 10…

100 square kilometers sounds like a big area. And it is, in continental Europe or in an urban area. In Montana, it's enough space for a few hundred cows. In desert regions, it's worth even less. You can buy 100 square kilometres of unserviced desert land for ~$10M.

Even better, get rid of the mandate for ethanol and cover a portion of the ex corn fields with solar panels with native plants under and around them. A small portion of the land that is near existing transmission lines is needed to replace combustion vehicles with electric vehicles. The bulk of the rest of this land could be available for other uses, including data centers.

This gives: sustained income for landowners, CO2 reduction, power for new uses, and partially restored ecosystems that have been greatly harmed by chemical laden monocultures.

Re: Oracle could face $7B collateral bill for Wisconsin data centre

#92

Post by saturn8601 » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 6:55 PM UTC

gavinsyancey wrote: post #66

khriss wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but they'll need to time their bust for before Jan next year. There is a significantly lower chance of a Democratic congress being as sympathetic.

You're assuming we'll actually have a free and fair election.

We'll find out in about 100 days!

Re: Oracle could face $7B collateral bill for Wisconsin data centre

#93

Post by sokka_h2otribe » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 7:03 PM UTC

mike_hearn wrote: post #56

abirch wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you cool the data center in space cost effectively? Unfortunately in space there isn't a lot of material (air) to transfer the heat.

You can just use ordinary radiators. Do the calculations, cooling isn't the problem it's made out to be.

(1) these are not ordinary radiators because ordinary radiators aren't gold plated and don't unfold dramatically from compact shipping sizes (2) It's absolutely loads of radiators

Re: Oracle could face $7B collateral bill for Wisconsin data centre

#94

Post by bronson » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 8:02 PM UTC

mike_hearn wrote: post #54

bronson wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why restrict yourself to 100% solar? Solar augmented by grid is pretty great. Also, you very conspicuously avoided talking about the difficulty/impact of a 1GW datacenter in space. One might suspect your motives aren't as impartial as you seem to think.

The whole problem is difficulty getting grid connections on Earth. If you can just hook up to the grid then why not just use it for everything. I don't have any motives, what are you talking about? I don't own SpaceX stock if that's what you're thinking. What's the difficulty of a 1GW datacenter in space? The number of satellites it requires seems to be within the realm of what SpaceX has already achieved. If the cal…

> What's the difficulty of a 1GW datacenter in space?

Why don't you ask your AI, the way you did with your earth-based scenario?

Re: Oracle could face $7B collateral bill for Wisconsin data centre

#95

Post by rwmj » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 8:21 PM UTC

27183 wrote: post #30

VonGuard wrote: post #10

Oracle cannot possibly be expecting to meet its bets here. My own empirical one-person observation is that my friend worked there in the group that went around the world standing up their new cloud datacenters, and he was there from basically 2019 to earlier this year. They laid him and half his team off earlier this year. Absolutely nonsensical if they're really building out cloud data centers. Because that's exactl…

From my limited second-hand understanding of orcl, a team that operates in a smooth and well greased manner is quite the anomaly. I could see why the company would have an immune response to it.

I have to imagine that their legal team is a smooth, well oiled machine. The technical side on the other hand ...

Re: Oracle could face $7B collateral bill for Wisconsin data centre

#96

Post by AnthonyMouse » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 8:45 PM UTC

treis wrote: post #81

wmf wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For whatever reason, nobody is trying to build solar-powered AI datacenters. Maybe they can't find enough land.

Half the time you get 0 solar power.

If only data centers had some kind of backup systems to prevent power interruptions, like inverters with batteries attached to them. They could call it an Uninterruptible Power Supply and then charge the batteries when other power is available and run on them when it isn't.

Re: Oracle could face $7B collateral bill for Wisconsin data centre

#97

Post by AnthonyMouse » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 8:49 PM UTC

downrightmike wrote: post #69

quickthrowman wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes 2.5 million solar panels to generate 1GW of electricity assuming 400W per panel and direct sunlight. 2.5M times 18 sq ft per panel is about 1000 acres or ~1.55 sq mi. That would work for a 1 GW data center, during the day, without clouds, during the summer.

The US gov't owns at least 50% of every state in the west. Or they could just build in the middle of bum f*ck Texas and get fossil and renewables. Too bad Texas' grid is so piss poor

The Texas grid that already generates more TWh from renewables than any other state?

Re: Oracle could face $7B collateral bill for Wisconsin data centre

#98

Post by AnthonyMouse » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 8:58 PM UTC

mike_hearn wrote: post #54

bronson wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why restrict yourself to 100% solar? Solar augmented by grid is pretty great. Also, you very conspicuously avoided talking about the difficulty/impact of a 1GW datacenter in space. One might suspect your motives aren't as impartial as you seem to think.

The whole problem is difficulty getting grid connections on Earth. If you can just hook up to the grid then why not just use it for everything. I don't have any motives, what are you talking about? I don't own SpaceX stock if that's what you're thinking. What's the difficulty of a 1GW datacenter in space? The number of satellites it requires seems to be within the realm of what SpaceX has already achieved. If the cal…

> The whole problem is difficulty getting grid connections on Earth. If you can just hook up to the grid then why not just use it for everything.

Because you already need inverters and batteries for backup power and then using solar + batteries for ordinary operations and the grid for backup is cheaper than the other way around.

Which is also why you may not even need the grid connection. Suppose you have diesel generators to use in case you have some kind of a fault in the solar system, the same as was traditionally done in case of a failure of a grid connection, and then use those for the one week every two years when solar generation is too low.

Re: Oracle could face $7B collateral bill for Wisconsin data centre

#99

Post by wmf » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 9:03 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #96

treis wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Half the time you get 0 solar power.

If only data centers had some kind of backup systems to prevent power interruptions, like inverters with batteries attached to them. They could call it an Uninterruptible Power Supply and then charge the batteries when other power is available and run on them when it isn't.

UPSes are designed to run for minutes not hours. I guess enough Megapacks to run overnight would be more expensive than gas generators.

Re: Oracle could face $7B collateral bill for Wisconsin data centre

#100

Post by mike_hearn » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 9:11 PM UTC

rented_mule wrote: post #84

mike_hearn wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole problem is difficulty getting grid connections on Earth. If you can just hook up to the grid then why not just use it for everything. I don't have any motives, what are you talking about? I don't own SpaceX stock if that's what you're thinking. What's the difficulty of a 1GW datacenter in space? The number of satellites it requires seems to be within the realm of what SpaceX has already achieved. If the cal…

> What's the difficulty of a 1GW datacenter in space? Simple back of the envelope calculations? Let's assume your numbers are correct and that panels in space can generate 10x the power per square meter per 24 hour period (due to efficiency, lack of night, and lack of atmosphere/weather). That means 10 KM^2 are needed for one such data center. The largest we've built in space is ~3,000 M^2 on the ISS. So one of these…

The whole thing does assume Starship works, so at that point satellites could be launched much faster.

I assume Starmind would use Tesla designed chips, which removes Nvidia's margin and so the cost of the chips is not necessarily so high.

Rad hardening isn't important at low altitudes, and inferencing can smoothly recover from glitched calculations/lockups.

I don't know if it makes economic sense or ever will, but technologically it does seem possible. And if you can't build on Earth for political reasons, then space can win by default.