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Chevron signs 20-year power agreement with Microsoft for West Texas data center

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Re: Chevron signs 20-year power agreement with Microsoft for West Texas data center

#151

Post by cratermoon »

chasd00 wrote: post #119
cratermoon wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They will also want reliable power Given the state of the power grid in Texas, this could be the most important consideration. Why? Texas is not connected to the national power grid, and only electricity from plants operating in Texas is available. The last winter and summer, demands on the grid have severely stressed, as reported in many places. In 2021 there as a state-wide crisis and almost a complete failure. h…

These power gen facilities wouldn’t be connected to the grid, only the datacenter.

Exactly. The data center gets it's own power, isolated from the flaky grid, and never has to deal with statewide crises.

Re: Chevron signs 20-year power agreement with Microsoft for West Texas data center

#152

Post by Retric »

_heimdall wrote: post #150
Retric wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nightly storage is cost effective because you use it 365 times a year. Seasonal storage is solving a different problem.

Nightly storage depends on being able to recharge to full capacity every day. That isn't a risk they could possibly accept, they would have to have an alternative source that could sustain when the sun doesn't come out or equipment fails.

> to full capacity every day.

A common misconception you don’t need to hit 100%, you need enough energy to make it either from that day or from prior days.

At grid scale daily production is never 0 and it’s never 100%. You can guarantee a surplus all 365 days a year, it’s just a cost vs benefit function, that’s however different from always fully charging your energy storage. If hypothetically the minimum was 99.9% of nighttime needs the odds you cover that gap the next day is extremely high to the point where a little extra storage makes sense vs aiming for 100% every day.

So now you’re just trying to optimize something for minimum cost. Utilities do this all the time with traditional generation you have random equipment failures and shifting seasonal demand. Thus they optimize maintenance schedules around seasonal demand etc.

Re: Chevron signs 20-year power agreement with Microsoft for West Texas data center

#153

Post by phil21 »

Symbiote wrote: post #89
phil21 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What this tells me is that like most hyperscalers, Microsoft is not price sensitive on the electricity side, What this should likely tell you, is that you are missing information and have an incomplete picture of the situation. Or it could be MSFT just likes to spend extra money for no reason because they are simply stupid. I'm gonna go with the former though. I'd be interested in all these behind the meter setups…

Maybe this counts, although it isn't built yet: https://www.datacenter-forum.com/edora/eurowind-energy-and-e... There are many datacenters in Denmark with decade-plus power purchase agreements from a specific wind farm, but with so much news recently I can't find if there's any operational with their own supply.

Certainly interesting! Much closer to what I feel is actual green power w/o the greenwashing such as the PPA's other facilities tend to use while actually just buying from the grid as a whole to deal with the "hard" parts of reliable power.

My frustration is that reliable power is the expensive part. Anyone can stand up some nameplate capacity in renewables, net out their numbers and pretend they are 100% green power in a press release. All while drawing from the "free" battery the grid supplies them at night or seasonally and letting someone else deal with the dirty part of it all. It's just not very interesting to me, as it's mostly marketing.

This one does seem to be grid-tied, but is much closer to the vision of actually being powered down to that last 5% via on-site batteries and wind. Power is like many things - the last 5% of reliability (or 1%, whatever) is the hard and expensive solve.

I remain skeptical batteries are going to end up being a solution for major datacenter buildouts in most locations. But I've been wrong before, and would love to be wrong about this one perhaps the most!

Re: Chevron signs 20-year power agreement with Microsoft for West Texas data center

#154

Post by Symbiote »

iAMkenough wrote: post #94
Symbiote wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Search "datacentre district heat Denmark" and you'll find several examples, such as Facebook's datacentre in Odense. Or one in Copenhagen, I didn't realize some small amount of my hot water (and heating in the winter) came from a datacentre. Neat.

That makes sense for existing infrastructure, taking waste heat from data centers and piping it through existing public systems. Especially for government environments like Denmark. I wonder what profits would need to be for a private energy company to install additional equipment at a remote fracking site to capture the burn off energy to then sell to a data center to then use.

The problem is finding a well-located user of the waste heat. Homes and offices are great in colder countries. Some industry can use it, but the examples I can think of (food/drink, heat for drying paint, making paper, some chemical/drug processes) aren't usually sited in the middle of nowhere.

Re: Chevron signs 20-year power agreement with Microsoft for West Texas data center

#155

Post by frollogaston »

rwyinuse wrote: post #137
drysine wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most of the cost is GPU, not power. Demand for AI is global (except for Anthropic, haha). When you build a DC that works only when the sun is shining, you are wasting half of you GPU capacity

That's why you build batteries that can store electricity for the other half. Or maybe nuclear power.

The batteries are expensive. Otherwise I'd expect to see wholesale electricity prices fluctuate a lot less.

Re: Chevron signs 20-year power agreement with Microsoft for West Texas data center

#156

Post by [deleted] »

hvb2 wrote: post #96
softwaredoug wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the US stays oil rich, we should expect the US to be a laggard in ending use of fossil fuels. China and EU are not oil rich, they’ll make a faster transition. Of course it’s idiotic to actively hobble clean energy. Or to put your finger on the scale for one source of energy, like the current administration does. But it’s not crazy to argue for “energy abundance” where the market just picks the cheapest energy o…

> But it’s not crazy to argue for “energy abundance” where the market just picks the cheapest energy on the market Except that there's externalities not priced in. The consequences of those are becoming increasingly visible and very expensive to address

[deleted]

Re: Chevron signs 20-year power agreement with Microsoft for West Texas data center

#157

Post by frollogaston »

softwaredoug wrote: post #13
epistasis wrote: post #6

Fascinating they're going this direction when solar and batteries are so cheap in Texas... Nearly all new additions to the grid are solar, wind, and storage right now on Texas' grid. Not because of Texas regulations, but because Texas' grid is one of the few grids where generation decisions are all made by independent investors trying to make money. Especially with the shortage in gas turbine manufacturing, very surp…

While the US stays oil rich, we should expect the US to be a laggard in ending use of fossil fuels. China and EU are not oil rich, they’ll make a faster transition. Of course it’s idiotic to actively hobble clean energy. Or to put your finger on the scale for one source of energy, like the current administration does. But it’s not crazy to argue for “energy abundance” where the market just picks the cheapest energy o…

There's also no first mover advantage with clean energy, maybe the opposite

Re: Chevron signs 20-year power agreement with Microsoft for West Texas data center

#158

Post by bob1029 »

otterley wrote: post #130
sidewndr46 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replace "extremely cheap" with "zero cost" and you've got it correct. Texas at night is an endless sea of flare stacks. We burn off an unbelievable amount of natural gas just to get rid of it.

I've often wondered how this is lawful under the EPA. Obviously it must be, but it seems like a gross oversight to allow people to just burn natural gas and allow its byproducts to escape into the atmosphere yet not get any useful work out of it.

The alternative is significantly worse.

Re: Chevron signs 20-year power agreement with Microsoft for West Texas data center

#159

Post by burnt-resistor »

21asdffdsa12 wrote: post #28

Sorry, but who in his right mind, signs contracts for 20 years - could you have imagined the world today 20 years ago? No and no. All one should do is sign snippet contracts of 5 years with the offer of an option to predefined condition. Split it into 4 sequences with a renewal.

This reminds me of startups signing 10 year leases on giant corporate campuses at the tail end of dotcom anticipating stonks perpetual growth.

Re: Chevron signs 20-year power agreement with Microsoft for West Texas data center

#160

Post by sajithdilshan »

nielsbot wrote: post #123
sajithdilshan wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The planet go destroyed millions of times during its 4 billion history. I'm pretty sure it will survive this time as well.

I'm not really worried about the planet, but humanity. But I get your point.

maybe the demise of humanity would be the best thing that can happen to the planet
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