161–170 of 214 posts
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.
The customers will see their monthly bill go up by $2.88
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.
Even in Texas' "disconnected" grid, we're seeing the same mess. Oncor is currently staring down a mind-boggling 350 GW in data center requests - to put that in perspective, that's more than triple ERCOT's entire peak demand. They’re now pivoting to a $47 billion infrastructure spree just to keep up, and they’ve already pushed through a $560 million rate hike to help foot the bill. It’s the same story as Maryland: no…
This is an absolutely insane amount of energy, given that will have a very high capacity factor. The whole UK is one tenth of that, 35GW.
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‘More power than an entire state’. Yep - take the Stratos data center project in Utah, the first phase of which is expected to consume 3GW and at full capacity is expected to be 9GW. By comparison, the entire state of Utah currently uses about 4GW.
For a less rural example, I am finding different numbers, but all of New York City is estimated at somewhere between 5-10GW. So, some 9 million people vs one data center.
I've been saying this is going to be _the_ biggest political issue of the upcoming midterms and then the 2028 election. High electricity prices are something that really whacks the middle class, there's an easy bogeyman to hate here (AI and datacentres, neither of which are popular), and it crosses partisan lines.
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What you have described is an obviously terrible system that doesn’t incentivize lower power consumption. That’s not how it’s going to work in Nevada. It will be the highest 15 minute period of each day, so if you spread out your power usage you have room to game the rates and save money. And if you have a bad day it will only cost you a dollar or two and the next day is fresh. Plus it’s not on top of the total consu…
> What you have described is an obviously terrible system that doesn’t incentivize lower power consumption. Doesn't it? Suppose you have a battery system which has access to the current price, so it charges when it's cheap and discharges when it's expensive. Then you don't pay the $19/kWh, you run on batteries then -- or sell at $19/kWh. And thereby turn a profit from installing the battery system, creating the incen…
Can someone explain to me why local governments are so against datacenters? It seems like a golden opportunity to build electric infrastructure that's paid for by corporations and if AI is a bubble at least that infrastructure will remain and continue to provide cheap power.
The discussion here is precisely because it is not fully paid for by the corporation.
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You're assuming that we're going to see a transition to a new administration with different priorities in the near future.
just to be clear, i mean the state administration not federal. but yes.. unless democracy breaks down completely.
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Since this is HN let's be factually correct. Almond production is irrelevant in water usage. The bulk of it is going to animal agriculture.
I am finding that 42% of California water is agriculture and 8% of that is for almonds. 3% of state water usage on a luxury nut might not be moving the needle that much, but it does feel wasteful for a state that is perpetually hovering on drought conditions.
And then there's the matter of Saudis coaxing farmers to grow alfalfa which is then exported to Saudi Arabia to feed cows there (!).