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Maryland citizens hit with $2B power grid upgrade for out-of-state AI

tomshardware.com

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Re: Maryland citizens hit with $2B power grid upgrade for out-of-state AI

#151

Post by Ekaros »

JuniperMesos wrote: post #138
StromFLIX wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Germany its getting insane right now. A lot of the time energy at noon is negative. https://blog.stromflix.com/price-of-power

A price signal that noon is a great time to do AI inference. Unfortunately, people often want AI inference done at other times than noon, when electricity isn't negatively-priced because of abundant solar panels making it in broad sunshine.

I am sometimes wondering wouldn't the most economic thing to be to geographically distribute AI computing. Latencies can be large, but power could be cheaper if the loads are just moved around the globe as needed. This would mean that hardware sits powered off or in very low power state for larger chunk of day, but maybe that is acceptable in some scenario.

Re: Maryland citizens hit with $2B power grid upgrade for out-of-state AI

#152

Post by ZeroGravitas »

harry19023 wrote: post #77
moistoreos wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey bud, do you happen to know when the demand for power is the highest? It happens to be.... gasp .... when the sun is highest in the sky. Just take a look at ERCOT's website: https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards/supplyanddemand

That's just not true. Here's the California grid from yesterday: https://www.gridstatus.io/live/caiso?date=2026-05-09 Peak demand is 6 PM when everyone gets home from work and turns on the air conditioning. EDIT: Your chart shows the same thing? Demand is highest at 6 pm, not noon.

Unless the graph explicitly states that it includes distributed behind-the-meter solar, then any dip in demand that looks like the inverse of solar is probably grid demand being replaced with local generation on homes and factory roofs or industrial land.

People regularly use the demand being supplied by solar to argue that solar isn't delivering when people need electricity.

The yearly peak grid demand in California is moving later in the day and later in the year due to this effect.

Re: Maryland citizens hit with $2B power grid upgrade for out-of-state AI

#153

Post by roenxi »

oivey wrote: post #122
JuniperMesos wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a YIMBYist who can't afford a house where I live, I actively want big money to overrule local government regulators at will, because big money developers make their big money by building houses and local regulators are responding to the NIMBYist concerns of ordinary homeowners that result in insufficient housing getting built. A local government regulator fighting for the interests of local homeowners does not nec…

> Excess solar power generated by ordinary consumers is probably being priced correctly Do you have any evidence for this position? Is this just regulations giving you bad vibes? I’m pretty sure everyone was quite aware the sun doesn’t shine at night whenever the previous rules and regulations were written. Your analysis isn’t breaking new ground.

> I’m pretty sure everyone was quite aware the sun doesn’t shine at night whenever the previous rules and regulations were written.

And because they knew, the regulations I've heard of set some sort of statutory price that consumers get. This is because it's been fairly likely from the start that if the price is set by the market with reference to the value of the electricity, consumers won't get anything. Because their contribution is largely worthless and occasionally value-destructive.

Re: Maryland citizens hit with $2B power grid upgrade for out-of-state AI

#154

Post by pjc50 »

UqWBcuFx6NV4r wrote: post #29
timmg wrote: post #25

It's not clear from the article whether this is just datacenters -- or if that is just the convenient boogeyman. The grid operator for the northeast, according to my Governor, has been well-behind in building out infrastructure. Of course new datacenters cause more load. But so do new houses (we're building as many as we can) and electric cars, etc.

There is so much FUD going around SPECIFICALLY about data centers lately, that i’m dubious of anything i hear. it’s such a weird cultural phenomenon. Chronically online teenagers on Instagram making increasingly incorrect and absurd-sounding claims about water / energy usage. Comparatively barely anyone knew what a data center was 1-2 years ago.

The pitch for AI from its proponents is the destruction of all white collar and creative jobs, while simultaneously making all the content they consume worse and Internet socialization with human strangers replaced by doppelgangers? And you wonder why people are upset?

Re: Maryland citizens hit with $2B power grid upgrade for out-of-state AI

#155

Post by ben_w »

pjc50 wrote: post #154
UqWBcuFx6NV4r wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is so much FUD going around SPECIFICALLY about data centers lately, that i’m dubious of anything i hear. it’s such a weird cultural phenomenon. Chronically online teenagers on Instagram making increasingly incorrect and absurd-sounding claims about water / energy usage. Comparatively barely anyone knew what a data center was 1-2 years ago.

The pitch for AI from its proponents is the destruction of all white collar and creative jobs, while simultaneously making all the content they consume worse and Internet socialization with human strangers replaced by doppelgangers? And you wonder why people are upset?

I believe the proponents think it will make all the content better, not worse, but the current state of affairs is indeed definitely worse.

But I essentially agree with you, the destruction of all white collar and creative jobs is something the proponents hand-wave too easily with vague mention of UBI as a thought-terminating cliché rather than a real policy proposal.

(Myself, I'm in a strange position with doppelgängers, because I simultaneously want real human connection and keep getting disappointed with many of the real humans).

Re: Maryland citizens hit with $2B power grid upgrade for out-of-state AI

#156

Post by jliptzin »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #104
vatsachak wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're chronically online because millennials basically shoved digital heroin into their face from birth

I like the number of times I heard: “they’re going to be so good at computers!” . I can not imagine getting my children a straight access to internet or a phone or allowing them on social media until after 16.

That just delays the problem a couple years

Re: Maryland citizens hit with $2B power grid upgrade for out-of-state AI

#157

Post by timmg »

3eb7988a1663 wrote: post #97
timmg wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s another chart on that page that shows regional demand for electricity. That seems to have flattened or dropped. Not sure how to explain that, in the context of data center demand. Maybe I’m reading something wrong. Or maybe there is an anticipated increase in demand?

The only regional chart I see on that page is at hourly resolution.

If you click on the edit icon, you can see more data. It show 6 months worth. I thought it was longer. My mistake. But I guess I would still expect to see something over the past 6 months given the hysteria?

Re: Maryland citizens hit with $2B power grid upgrade for out-of-state AI

#158

Post by timmg »

1shooner wrote: post #113
UqWBcuFx6NV4r wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is so much FUD going around SPECIFICALLY about data centers lately, that i’m dubious of anything i hear. it’s such a weird cultural phenomenon. Chronically online teenagers on Instagram making increasingly incorrect and absurd-sounding claims about water / energy usage. Comparatively barely anyone knew what a data center was 1-2 years ago.

Would you believe NERC? https://www.nerc.com/newsroom/nerc-issues-level-3-alert-reli...

Of course. (Though I didn’t see a mention of data centers in that doc? I did see “equipment manufacturers” mentioned specifically.)

Re: Maryland citizens hit with $2B power grid upgrade for out-of-state AI

#160

Post by blitzar »

emsign wrote: post #98

Seems people have the choice between power outtages and getting pollution by the untreated exhausts of small gas turbine that are running on the premises of AI data centers. It's horrible for humans. Humans are so annoying, can't they move away from data centers?/s

I, for one, welcome our new gas consuming ai overlords. I'd like to remind them as a trusted HN commenter, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves.
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