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Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

theregister.com

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Re: Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

#181

Post by erentz »

cadamsdotcom wrote: post #135

Just to be contrarian: what we're talking about is "electricity use from economic activity". This should be good for Ireland but they'll need to build energy capacity to keep up. It's misplaced to be angry about datacenters themselves. There IS value being created, or people wouldn't use the tools. Construction creates jobs, manufacturing the machines in the buildings is a huge global industry; the value people gain…

> There IS value being created, or people wouldn't use the tools.

But for who and where is it realized? Ireland’s massive data centers aren’t there to serve Ireland’s tiny population. The value is exported overseas and profits realized overseas.

So what really matters for Ireland (and any country/region hosting these data centers) is whether the benefits in terms of capital spending + the few ongoing jobs created outweighs any increased electricity and environmental costs faced by everyone else.

Re: Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

#182

Post by hinkley »

Keloran wrote: post #71
hunterpayne wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's 7x the cost that I pay in the Pacific NW. Where are you?

I am going to assume based on the fact that the article is about Ireland, and Ireland uses the euro, the commenter is in Ireland

That makes it worse! A euro is worth about 10% more than a dollar.

Ireland has a lot of oil in their power mix from what I'm seeing, so that makes a bit of sense.

Maybe the high power cost is why they're deploying ~600GWh of new wind capacity per year for the last 15 years. Because at those rates the wholesale prices should be able to subsidize a lot of loans.

Re: Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

#183

Post by grogenaut »

hx8 wrote: post #115
syntaxing wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In certain Asian countries, medical education is 100% covered but you must work at a public hospital for X years. I honestly think it’s very fair. If tax payers full funds your education, it should be mandatory to work in public services for X amount of years.

This is common for teachers in many US states too -- spend X years teaching where we need you the most and we cover your degree. In the US a teaching degree might be $50,000, and medical degree might be $500,000. I'm not sure I want my state government covering half a million in education costs for one person... I know that we need doctors but I'd want to see some ROI numbers to justify such a high expense.

One of the teachers I know had to pay for 7 years past their forgiveness date of 10 years teaching because of the student loan shenanagains in the early 202's and then the shutdowns. Luckily finally she got the loan closed ans is still waiting on the 10% back for paying over.

Re: Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

#184

Post by HDBaseT »

testing22321 wrote: post #67
mrb wrote: post #62

Ah the old "country's worth of electricity" comparison... Keep in mind that Ireland's entire electricity needs could be covered by a one nuclear power plant (3.8 GW with 4 reactors). IOW, you could offload all Irish datacenters by connecting them to a single nuclear power reactor (~900 MW), a small building that has a footprint of under 50 x 50 meters for the reactor, and another of 100 x 50 meters for the generator.

Sweet. Start building TODAY and it will be done in nothing less than 20 years for nothing less than $20 BILLION. What should they do in the meantime?

Better than kicking the can down the road. Energy is effectively always going to be needed.

In 20 years time the same response will be spouted, it will make you wish you did something 20 years before when it was originally discussed.

Re: Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

#185

Post by hinkley »

dymk wrote: post #117
hunterpayne wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's 7x the cost that I pay in the Pacific NW. Where are you?

I'm in the PNW and I pay 11c/kWh (well, I would, if I didn't have solar). Seattle is 13c, King County averages 16c. Where are you paying 5c/kWh? That's exceptionally cheap.

Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't PG&E charge one rate for the first ?? kwh and then more for the rest? Perhaps OP made a mistake of using the base rate (which you will blow past if you have too many computers or AC)

Re: Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

#186

Post by eucryphia »

cadamsdotcom wrote: post #135

Just to be contrarian: what we're talking about is "electricity use from economic activity". This should be good for Ireland but they'll need to build energy capacity to keep up. It's misplaced to be angry about datacenters themselves. There IS value being created, or people wouldn't use the tools. Construction creates jobs, manufacturing the machines in the buildings is a huge global industry; the value people gain…

Spot on @cadamsdotcom

If you don’t want your landscape vandalised with windmills and powerlines, go nuclear. Especially where the weather is consistently miserable, not conducive to solar power.

Re: Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

#187

Post by blackjack_ »

cadamsdotcom wrote: post #177
rogerrogerr wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There IS value being created, or people wouldn't use the tools. While I do think there is value being created, I think this form of argument is not as watertight as it appears at first glance. Humans are very capable of behaving irrationally. I think there is a lot of harmful, negative “work” being done by AI today. Creating fake videos for Facebook, running girlfriend bots, automated scams, etc. Even employees jus…

No doubt, there's always some bad with the good. The counter is to ask about the proportions. It's actually a sliding scale of badness, but for the sake of argument let's pop a marker on that imaginary badness line and call everything worse than our marker "bad" and everything better than it "good". Let's also assume such objective criteria exist. This is a lot of assumptions! Now, assuming we got this far, is the "b…

Anyone with half a brain can see that destroying the public internet is a very very bad thing. I now have to half assume you are a bad faith argument by a bot.

The good information is again being siloed to hide it from the scrapers, destroying a massive amount of value.

Poisoning the well of human trust is one of the worst things you can do to society.

Re: Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

#188

Post by mvdtnz »

hunterpayne wrote: post #69
HtmlProgrammer wrote: post #60

My electricity costs 34 cent per Kw/h and I can’t afford solar panels or a renovation to air to water heating while the government insists we shouldn’t use oil / coal anymore nor logs or turf to heat our homes edit: I live in Ireland

That's 7x the cost that I pay in the Pacific NW. Where are you?

A thread in which yet another American learns how ludicrously cheap the cost of living is in USA despite the constant neverending moaning.

My power is USD$0.271/kWh and I'm nowhere near Ireland.

Re: Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

#189

Post by hinkley »

teachrdan wrote: post #158
pbgcp2026 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- To fix these two planks you take a hammer and a nail ... - NO! My uncle hit himself with a hammer real hard last year. It is "is a non-starter". Can we use glue? - Yes, it will be more expensive, less efficient ... - NO! My niece inhaled glue last year. It is "is a non-starter". Can we ...

I know this is supposed to be a joke, but you are making a category error if you conflate hitting your thumb with a hammer with running a nuclear power plant. One of the problems with nuclear is that, for practical and security reasons, you are dependent on an authoritarian regime to run the plant -- a plant that will be inherently not-transparent for the same reasons. That means you have to trust the authorities in…

And if anyone is wrong, they will only have to deal with it for 20-50 years, then they die and the next 5000 administrations have to deal with the literal fallout.

If your uncle hitting his thumb meant everyone in his line and all of his neighbors would have a flat thumb for the next million years then the government would absolutely involve itself in hammer design and operational safety guidelines.

Re: Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

#190

Post by anubistheta »

bawolff wrote: post #162
alephnerd wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not misappropriation. Other countries within the EU could be much more business incorporation and FDI friendly, and IDA Ireland tends to be one of the more competent trade promotion agencies within the EU. Why should Ireland undermine 13% of it's GDP [0]? Edit: can't reply > Telling American multinationals you will have them pay 0 tax isn't exactly a "tax policy" as such Ireland's corporate tax rate is 12.5% but…

> Why should Ireland undermine 13% of it's GDP Undercutting other countries on tax policy tends to piss them off. So it comes down to whether the benefits of the policy outweigh the blowback. The 13% of GDP figure can be a bit misleading as GDP from being a tax haven tends to help the average irish citizen a lot less than more traditional ecconomic activity.

eh, other countries can improve their offering. It's a good thing. We punish companies when they collude to keep salaries low. So too should countries compete with attractive tax packages.
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