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New gas-powered data centers could emit more greenhouse gases than whole nations

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Re: New gas-powered data centers could emit more greenhouse gases than whole nations

#101

Post by applied_heat »

red75prime wrote: post #87
konschubert wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Abilene, Texas is also a great place to build a solar power plant with some batteries and reduce the gas bills for these datacenters. EDIT: I am not suggesting that they don’t build gas turbines or go off grid. I’m saying they can save fuel by using solar when it’s there.

Some batteries? Battery-backed solar has the highest cost as a baseload power source due to high intermittency of solar power.

Do you have a source for this? I constantly point out that several cloudy days in a row often happens but am rebutted with graphs of the declining costs of solar modules and batteries

Re: New gas-powered data centers could emit more greenhouse gases than whole nations

#102

Post by GorbachevyChase »

pjc50 wrote: post #44
melling wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t forget environmentalists have been fighting against nuclear energy for decades. Update: Since I’m being downvoted I’m going to add a little sting: Good luck with your solar power web servers and skipping flights. Poor judgement really does have a price. It’s now inevitable that it’s going to get a bit warmer… everywhere. We’ll be lucky to hit Net Zero by 2100.

Yes, and that dates from the era when everyone thought that a "nuclear winter" (from an exchange of nuclear bombs between the US and USSR) was a more immediate risk than a long slow problem of climate change. That's what the French government carried out a terrorist attack against Greenpeace in New Zealand for: the Rainbow Warrior was protesting against French nuclear weapons testing. Has everyone forgotten that the…

I was under the impression that Carl Sagan basically made up the concept of nuclear winter because of his political alignment.

And, yes, every country should have nuclear power and nuclear deterrence. Please contrast how the US negotiated with North Korea and Libya. Or what happened to Ukraine after they denuclearized. You might be impressed at how palatable peace becomes when leadership has to consider their personal safety and not just cynical economic and political calculus in their use of force.

Re: New gas-powered data centers could emit more greenhouse gases than whole nations

#103

Post by theteapot »

natpalmer1776 wrote: post #95
konschubert wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Abilene, Texas is also a great place to build a solar power plant with some batteries and reduce the gas bills for these datacenters. EDIT: I am not suggesting that they don’t build gas turbines or go off grid. I’m saying they can save fuel by using solar when it’s there.

Everyone is talking about batteries but honestly you don’t need batteries. - Data centers don’t sleep - Data center load (for AI) could be shifted to follow the sun - The energy requirements mean you aren’t likely to overbuild your solar farm At night just stop running your GPUs and / or pull from the grid

<50% utilization of billions of dollars of capex. Brilliant idea.

Re: New gas-powered data centers could emit more greenhouse gases than whole nations

#104

Post by red75prime »

applied_heat wrote: post #101
red75prime wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some batteries? Battery-backed solar has the highest cost as a baseload power source due to high intermittency of solar power.

Do you have a source for this? I constantly point out that several cloudy days in a row often happens but am rebutted with graphs of the declining costs of solar modules and batteries

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S036054422... Figure 3

When used as the sole source of electricity solar clocks at 565 EUR/MWh. Nuclear, for comparison, is at 141 EUR/MWh.

Re: New gas-powered data centers could emit more greenhouse gases than whole nations

#105

Post by nicoburns »

noosphr wrote: post #83
nicoburns wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Pacific Ocean is a bit of an exageration here. There isn't a single battery this big today, but if batteries continue following the exponential growth curve they've been on then there probably will be in the next decade or so (if not sooner).

There's a bit of a difference between 'some batteries' and at least five times the size of the largest battery ever build.

There is, and "some batteries" is an under count, however:

- The ratio between "some water" and "the pacific ocean" is a lot higher than 5

- On an exponential growth curve, a factor of 5 isn't all that much.

This probably isn't feasible for a data center being built today (although they could build solar to at least reduce their fossil fuel power generation needs during the day). But it probably will be for data centers being built in 5-10 years time.

Basically it's important to differentiate between "we can't quite do this yet" and "we'll likely never be able to do this". And powering a data center with rewnewables+batteries is definitely in the former category.

Re: New gas-powered data centers could emit more greenhouse gases than whole nations

#106

Post by applied_heat »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #49
gruez wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Because it’s a dangerous technology where profit over security can have severe consequences. Yeah it's far better to have power plants kill a steady stream of people, but in a banal way that's hard to attribute, like coal power plants causing lung cancer.

No, but hydroelectric works pretty well. There's a reason they recycle aluminum, etc. (power-hungry industries—crypto-mining, ha ha) along the Columbia River, etc. So build your data centers there. No reason to choose the least evil.

Hydro electric as a resource is probably mostly exploited - are there a lot of big hydro projects left to build? If there are they must be difficult or expensive or they would have already been built.

Re: New gas-powered data centers could emit more greenhouse gases than whole nations

#107

Post by plytow »

SanDiegoSun wrote: post #51
Zigurd wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please. Show me a nuke that was under 10 billion over budget and less than 20 years late. Seriously. Don't even try to insert nuclear power into the debate before you show it can be competently built, never mind safely run and waste safely disposed. But what about the French you say! The French are discovering they forgot to set aside money for decommissioning.

This seems to be a western issue. China has been producing nuclear reactors quite cost effectively. Radiant with their modular reactors seems to be doing quite well.

[dead]

Re: New gas-powered data centers could emit more greenhouse gases than whole nations

#108

Post by anticorporate »

atonse wrote: post #46
venzaspa wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some context, it's a country with 40 million people.

But it’s hardly industrialized right? So is that a fair comparison?

It actually sits right about in the middle of all countries for percentage of GDP from industrial sectors.

It's pretty heavily fossil-fuel powered right now, but like most of the rest of the world Morocco is planning to capture most of its growth in energy demand with renewables. Because, getting back to the original discussion, it'd be idiotic to choose fossil fuels over renewables in 2026.

Re: New gas-powered data centers could emit more greenhouse gases than whole nations

#109

Post by konschubert »

red75prime wrote: post #104
applied_heat wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a source for this? I constantly point out that several cloudy days in a row often happens but am rebutted with graphs of the declining costs of solar modules and batteries

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S036054422... Figure 3 When used as the sole source of electricity solar clocks at 565 EUR/MWh. Nuclear, for comparison, is at 141 EUR/MWh.

Nobody is suggesting to use solar as the sole source of electricity. That would obviously be insane and then leads to silly numbers like the ones you gave.

A MWh of solar is about 30 Euro/MWh if you levelize the capital costs.

Re: New gas-powered data centers could emit more greenhouse gases than whole nations

#110

Post by konschubert »

applied_heat wrote: post #101
red75prime wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some batteries? Battery-backed solar has the highest cost as a baseload power source due to high intermittency of solar power.

Do you have a source for this? I constantly point out that several cloudy days in a row often happens but am rebutted with graphs of the declining costs of solar modules and batteries

Batteries are good to cover evening peaks or maybe a while night. Not multiple days of low solar, that’s not economical.
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