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50K Tahoe residents need power as utility eyes redirecting lines to data centers

fortune.com

121–130 of 164 posts

Re: 50K Tahoe residents need power as utility eyes redirecting lines to data centers

#121

I didn’t realize the scale of data centers in northern Nevada. Residential customers will mostly pay 70% for the transmission line costs. 12 data centers by 2033 with 5,900 MW of power. “NV Energy is building Greenlink West, a 525-kV, $4.2 billion transmission line from Las Vegas to Yerington, expected online in May 2027. Schwarzrock said Liberty would be “first in the waiting line” when Greenlink opens, giving it ac…

I didn’t realize the scale of data centers in northern Nevada.

I also find it hard to wrap my head around the scale involved. Right now I'm putting together a home server with 4x GPUs. Never having worked with a real server chassis before, I didn't really think the logistics through. It weighs over 100 pounds and requires two people to move. It had to be delivered on a pallet and unloaded with a forklift, way too big for UPS. Takes up my whole desk at the moment. Needs a 220V 30A outlet. If I stuffed it full of RTX6000s, it would draw about 6 kW.

And this article talks about a 6 GW project, so that's... a million of these giant power-slurping boat anchors.

There's a similar data center project in Utah which is also causing a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth. That one is 9 GW. 1.5 million huge-ass (to me) 4U servers. This just seems nuts.

Re: 50K Tahoe residents need power as utility eyes redirecting lines to data centers

#122
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Haiti is in Anarchy This is what people say when they have no idea what people mean by the POLITICAL system of Anarchism (Libertarian Socialism). Anarchism, the political system, is not "chaos". That is propaganda that started during the 1930's. If you want to learn about it, real the Anarchist FAQ. (I have a degrees in American History and Economics if that matters). https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/the-ana…

Yeah, and communism has never been given a fair shake, either. For that matter, neither has laissez-faire capitalism. At some point, you need to accept that your favorite "-ism" has an impedance mismatch with human nature.

Anarchism means "without hierarchy". This how humans organized until the populations of sedentary agricultural communities exploded. I will argue, and keep arguing despite downvotes, that anarchism has the least impedance mismatch with human nature out of every system, because it was the status quo before civilization became the norm.

Re: 50K Tahoe residents need power as utility eyes redirecting lines to data centers

#123
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haiti is in Anarchy. All sharing and mutual aid is shadowed by resource and power struggle. It is even worse than communism and fascism.

> Haiti is in Anarchy This is what people say when they have no idea what people mean by the POLITICAL system of Anarchism (Libertarian Socialism). Anarchism, the political system, is not "chaos". That is propaganda that started during the 1930's. If you want to learn about it, real the Anarchist FAQ. (I have a degrees in American History and Economics if that matters). https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/the-ana…

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Re: 50K Tahoe residents need power as utility eyes redirecting lines to data centers

#124
post #101
post #13

This is an interesting problem. I have been wanting to dig deeper on some of the complaints around water and power. This one is unique though. Doesn’t read much like a problem so much with data center growth as it does with Liberty mismanaging their business/assets. For almost 20 years liberty acted as nothing more than a transmission operator with very weak agreements on power generation. They should have been figur…

If the residents of Tahoe owned their electricity provider, we wouldn't be having this problem. This was the norm up utnil the late 20th century and then we started selling off all the utilities for "efficiency". These public-private "partnerships" (or just straight privatization with a regulated industry) allow investors to keep profits while pushing losses onto the public. Private equity is getting into utilities b…

Don’t start throwing private equity as another scape goat. This is more of a regulatory gap than anything. They pay CPUC rates but NV is effectively their grid. This is definitely in the wheelhouse of Liberty and Lake Tahoe residents should have been figuring out the issue.

Re: 50K Tahoe residents need power as utility eyes redirecting lines to data centers

#125
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans are bad at solving problems before they need to be solved.

Not having a reliable power source sounds like a here and now problem.

It was working until it wasn't.

Re: 50K Tahoe residents need power as utility eyes redirecting lines to data centers

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and communism has never been given a fair shake, either. For that matter, neither has laissez-faire capitalism. At some point, you need to accept that your favorite "-ism" has an impedance mismatch with human nature.

Anarchism means "without hierarchy". This how humans organized until the populations of sedentary agricultural communities exploded. I will argue, and keep arguing despite downvotes, that anarchism has the least impedance mismatch with human nature out of every system, because it was the status quo before civilization became the norm.

pretty sure humans had hierarchy from the beginning.

Re: 50K Tahoe residents need power as utility eyes redirecting lines to data centers

#127
post #82

There are two simultaneous problems that I've come to understand with datacenters and the people that live in their proximity: 1. Somehow the public is always left holding the bag for increased transmission costs despite the cause of the increase being a single (or short list) of outliers. 2. The residential public, as is tradition, is always asked to scale down for industrial demand. How can we imagine expanding a s…

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Re: 50K Tahoe residents need power as utility eyes redirecting lines to data centers

#128
post #97
post #82

There are two simultaneous problems that I've come to understand with datacenters and the people that live in their proximity: 1. Somehow the public is always left holding the bag for increased transmission costs despite the cause of the increase being a single (or short list) of outliers. 2. The residential public, as is tradition, is always asked to scale down for industrial demand. How can we imagine expanding a s…

Transferring wealth from the young and poor to the old and wealthy is the entire purpose of our government. This is now the endpoint we are bouldering towards: the bottom 90% increasingly have nothing left to steal or exploit. And just like an algal bloom that eventually runs out of oxygen and dies, this is where this system and our society unravels.

*Transferring wealth from the poor to the rich

Re: 50K Tahoe residents need power as utility eyes redirecting lines to data centers

#129
post #82

There are two simultaneous problems that I've come to understand with datacenters and the people that live in their proximity: 1. Somehow the public is always left holding the bag for increased transmission costs despite the cause of the increase being a single (or short list) of outliers. 2. The residential public, as is tradition, is always asked to scale down for industrial demand. How can we imagine expanding a s…

The reality is that these data centers make money for billionaire douchebags. And unlike the billionaire douchebags of yesteryear they don't invest in the local economy. NOTHING IS TRICKLING DOWN In fact our modern billionaire douchebags love talking about how much they hate humanity.

nothing ever trickled down. philanthropy is not trickle down, and the gates foundation has to be one of the most critical I know of.

Re: 50K Tahoe residents need power as utility eyes redirecting lines to data centers

#130

This is like the movie Chinatown, where people were fighting over water, but now it's all about electricity. It sounds like Lake Tahoe residents kicked the can down the road and didn't care about electricity for so long that now they have to pay the piper. I think it's entire just that they have to bear the costs of their own electricity.

What exactly am I supposed to do as a resident to change how a state government regulated utility operates? Please respond with something other than "Vote", which I already do.

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