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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

#211

Post by twelve40 »

jmyeet wrote: post #198
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…

Yeah this is just completely wrong. Data centers pay sub-market rates for electricity (as well as getting tax relief, generally). Generally, they use so much electricity that more infrastructure needs to be built. Who pays for that? Not the data center. The utility's capex is spread across all customers (sometimes minus the data center). Then the utility needs to generate moer power or buy it from elsewhere. That's t…

> Who pays for that? Not the data center

uh... how? they do pay for what they use.

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

#212

Post by hunterpayne »

hinkley wrote: post #185
dymk wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

They do and how they do the price tranches has changed a lot in the last 5 years. It used to be 4 tranches, 10, 20, 30 and 40. It was very hard to get into the 20 tranch for a single home (maybe if you were bitcoin mining or something). Now the tranches are multiple times higher and its easier to get into the higher tranches. Look on PG&E's website for the specifics.

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

#215

Post by [deleted] »

blackjack_ wrote: post #187
cadamsdotcom wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#216

Post by cadamsdotcom »

jmyeet wrote: post #198
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…

Yeah this is just completely wrong. Data centers pay sub-market rates for electricity (as well as getting tax relief, generally). Generally, they use so much electricity that more infrastructure needs to be built. Who pays for that? Not the data center. The utility's capex is spread across all customers (sometimes minus the data center). Then the utility needs to generate moer power or buy it from elsewhere. That's t…

For some reason Ireland's government is offering favorable conditions for datacenter construction.

Don't you ever stop to wonder why?

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

#217

Post by s1artibartfast »

wat10000 wrote: post #131
s1artibartfast wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, no you arent. Money given without strings attached is just that. Claiming ownership of another humans labor is called slavery. It might be evidence that you or your government isn't benefiting you with its spending. That doesnt put obligation on the recipient.

Does the same reasoning apply to student loans? Is the lender engaging in slavery by claiming entitlement to a portion of the student’s future labor?

No, student loans are not slavery for two reasons. First, the borrower agreed and signed a contract. Second, the debt owner is the one calling it due.

This is substantially different than expecting control on how debt free doctors or engineers spend their time or what jobs they work.

The crux of this is that externalty price analysis is only useful when bounded by real harms and property rights. Otherwise, anyone can call anything they dont like an externality: If my employee quits for a better job- Externality! If a woman wants to go home to their family instead of having sex with me - Externality!

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

#218

Post by bawolff »

alephnerd wrote: post #175
bawolff wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> 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 As I pointed out, if Ireland didn't adopt it's tech FDI policy which it did in the 1990s, it would be a much poorer country today. Going from Libyan, Soviet, and Greek to Finland level living standards in 30 years was not guaranteed, and it was Irela…

> As I pointed out, if Ireland didn't adopt it's tech FDI policy which it did in the 1990s, it would be a much poorer country today.

Perhaps, but if you want to measure the effect it had on ordinary Irish people you should be using GNI not GDP. I'm not saying it had no effect, just that GDP is a misleading measure.

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

#220

Post by bawolff »

anubistheta wrote: post #190
bawolff wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> eh, other countries can improve their offering.

Or they could use coercive measures to punish the countries undercutting them. There is no world police after all to prevent them.

A big reason why capitalism works is 2 factors: its easy to start competitors and established players are not allowed to shoot up and coming companies. Neither apply to countries.

I'm not arguing about whether its a good thing or not, just that it is the way the world works. Whether or not Ireland's policies are a good idea depends on how much value they capture vs how much value they lose due to their consequences, chief among them being the strain such policies can put on foreign relations & trade.

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