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County with 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to 'Conserve Electricity'

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Re: County with 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to 'Conserve Electricity'

#171

Post by officeplant »

infecto wrote: post #140
axus wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The gas-powered generators are what makes a data center unpleasant to live by.

Hyperbole if I have ever seen it. Absolutely there are specific outliers (x ai) but this is not the norm.

Of the data center rollouts I've been contracted to do safety systems for, ALL of them have gas turbines as part of their power infrastructure on property. They don't solely have gas, but they are mixed Solar/Gas every time.

A few of them in the future pipeline swear they will have nuclear but I don't see that coming to fruition soon.

Re: County with 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to 'Conserve Electricity'

#172

Post by mk_stjames »

iamtheworstdev wrote: post #165
hakunin wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just use smart lights that feed video into an llm to check if lights should shut down.

hahah that is so wonderfully malicious compliance

That's not 'malicious compliance'...

it's 'Jevonsian insanity'.

Re: County with 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to 'Conserve Electricity'

#174

Post by samothrace »

cduzz wrote: post #109
phil21 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Residential energy reduction is one small piece of it. The de-industrializing of the US is a much larger reason we have been able to use cheap parlor tricks vs. actually building things for the past 40ish years. Those cheap tricks are now running out of easy gains, and the chickens are coming home to roost. At some point you run out of your grandfathers investment into future society and basic infrastructure. To anyo…

I think the "party line" is that the goal shouldn't be "1950s grid, but bigger and with more red meat!" Renewables actually cover a lot of the newer demand and can be put around where it doesn't require as much transmission capacity because the production is happening closer to the demand. And frankly, these jumbo sized data centers can just go figure out how to power themselves. If they want to put PV and wind and s…

What do you mean by "AI dioxin"? Google turns up nothing for data centers releasing dioxin.

Re: County with 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to 'Conserve Electricity'

#175

Post by olelele »

Havoc wrote: post #169
dmix wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and residential consumers pick up the increased infra costs is insane These companies are investing heavily in new energy development? https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/30/data-centers-love-solar-he... > Meta kicked off the year with a 200-megawatt solar deal with multinational electric utility Engie. The purchase went toward a solar farm near one of the company’s existing data centers in Texas. At the time of the dea…

Think you're missing the point a bit there. All that generation capacity is great, but you need to get the electrons to the datacenter. And in most jurisdictions the transmission part of the grid is a shared cost. Mostly...there is technically some obligation to pay for upgrades but it doesn't really work. e.g. >Over 95% of the projects identified passed all of their transmission connection costs onto local people’s…

>It's a real privatize profits/benefit, socialize losses/costs type setup.

Just like all developments since collective ideas went out of fashion...

Re: County with 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to 'Conserve Electricity'

#176

Post by nonplus »

FireBeyond wrote: post #133
infecto wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The county narrative is cherry picking imo and poor journalism. They are part of PJM which contains one of the largest data centers hubs. The PJM grid serves something like 67mm residents. PJM also uses an annual forward capacity auction to set prices and that is at least partly to blame in price increases. They are trying to forecast peak demand 3 years in advance to set a price for power plant owners to stay online…

That might be so, but is also simplifying things a little too much and pointing to the issue. "It's a poorly designed grid". PJM might serve 65M+ users, but 2GW isn't easily able to be shipped across their grid. Dominion is proposing a 180mi 525kV HVDC line (ironically enough, from southern VA to northern VA) that can handle up to 3GW. But that's a $5 billion project. That number goes up. A PJM project proposal to sh…

Agreed, this is a difficult topic to simplify. "The grid can handle it" is almost always a * statement.

Can it handle it today? What about next year with the approved interconnects? What about in 2030? Does "handle it" include summer load or just average, what if temps are 5 degrees hotter than power models ran? What if PJM can't solve it's high priority overloads this year?

People want to talk about the grid as a binary system vs what it really is.

If serving those 37 customers forces choices that increase risk or cost for real customers (citizens, critical infrastructure like hospitals), it's a bad deal.

It seems like power utilities are optimized to solve problems, and serving these 37 customers can be framed as a solvable problem more easily than "Keeping the grid affordable and reliable" can.

Re: County with 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to 'Conserve Electricity'

#177

Post by infecto »

FireBeyond wrote: post #133
infecto wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The county narrative is cherry picking imo and poor journalism. They are part of PJM which contains one of the largest data centers hubs. The PJM grid serves something like 67mm residents. PJM also uses an annual forward capacity auction to set prices and that is at least partly to blame in price increases. They are trying to forecast peak demand 3 years in advance to set a price for power plant owners to stay online…

That might be so, but is also simplifying things a little too much and pointing to the issue. "It's a poorly designed grid". PJM might serve 65M+ users, but 2GW isn't easily able to be shipped across their grid. Dominion is proposing a 180mi 525kV HVDC line (ironically enough, from southern VA to northern VA) that can handle up to 3GW. But that's a $5 billion project. That number goes up. A PJM project proposal to sh…

Who said it was a poorly designed grid? I think you missed what I said. Their forward price auction system misaligns prices 3 year in advance. My point is a lot of the price increases for PJM is due to this auction system.

Re: County with 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to 'Conserve Electricity'

#178

Post by bryan_w »

infecto wrote: post #92
sheepscreek wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's easy to blame datacenters, but there are many factors at play here. Henrico County currently has 37 data-centres with ~2 gigawatts capacity (expected to reach 3 gigawatts). Apparently, 1 MW can power approximately 834 homes annually. So 2 gigawatts would be closer to powering > 1.6 million homes. Surely, that kind of concentrated demand is going to affect electricity distribution costs for everyone, which is w…

The county narrative is cherry picking imo and poor journalism. They are part of PJM which contains one of the largest data centers hubs. The PJM grid serves something like 67mm residents. PJM also uses an annual forward capacity auction to set prices and that is at least partly to blame in price increases. They are trying to forecast peak demand 3 years in advance to set a price for power plant owners to stay online…

> poor journalism.

404 media has never been interested in being good journalism, but rather driving signups to to their website by people who don't know what proper journalism looks like

Re: County with 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to 'Conserve Electricity'

#179

Post by infecto »

nonplus wrote: post #176
FireBeyond wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That might be so, but is also simplifying things a little too much and pointing to the issue. "It's a poorly designed grid". PJM might serve 65M+ users, but 2GW isn't easily able to be shipped across their grid. Dominion is proposing a 180mi 525kV HVDC line (ironically enough, from southern VA to northern VA) that can handle up to 3GW. But that's a $5 billion project. That number goes up. A PJM project proposal to sh…

Agreed, this is a difficult topic to simplify. "The grid can handle it" is almost always a * statement. Can it handle it today? What about next year with the approved interconnects? What about in 2030? Does "handle it" include summer load or just average, what if temps are 5 degrees hotter than power models ran? What if PJM can't solve it's high priority overloads this year? People want to talk about the grid as a bi…

Nobody has proven that those 37 customers are to blame compared to the poorly structured forward pricing system which is largely to blame for some of their recent pricing increases. Not sure where this grid can handle it narrative is coming from. Most of the woes in this article are cherry picked.

Re: County with 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to 'Conserve Electricity'

#180

Post by infecto »

officeplant wrote: post #171
infecto wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hyperbole if I have ever seen it. Absolutely there are specific outliers (x ai) but this is not the norm.

Of the data center rollouts I've been contracted to do safety systems for, ALL of them have gas turbines as part of their power infrastructure on property. They don't solely have gas, but they are mixed Solar/Gas every time. A few of them in the future pipeline swear they will have nuclear but I don't see that coming to fruition soon.

And is that datacenter bypassing air quality regulation and backing up to a housing development? Most/all of the construction I have tracked meets air quality guidelines and fairly remote but I know that is not always the case!
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