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Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas

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Re: Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas

#231

Post by vablings »

micro2588 wrote: post #206
alsetmusic wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there's an admin killing clean energy so I think we know where that anger belongs. Dems suck too, but what can you do. One is worse, clearly.

As much as I wish it were different I think this would be the outcome under any administration. Natural gas in the USA is just stupidly cheap inflation adjusted, is energy dense, power plants require few land resources, pipeline infrastructure exists, robust and deep supply chain, etc. I don't hold much hope of the USA kicking the habit as it is such a competitive advantage. If we don't burn it locally it will be exp…

The whole idea that a solar panel needs to be backed up by gas is absolutely asinine. We live in a capitalist society if there is so much excess power in the day and little power during the night then that means there is money to be made by storing that energy then doing arbitrage with daytime vs nighttime rates.

Build the solar panels and the battery will come because there is serious money to be made as the differential increases.

Re: Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas

#232

Post by vablings »

ourmandave wrote: post #127
coldbrewed wrote: post #4

This is a collection of "OpenAI will boldly act in the abstract to provide air coverage for Texas leadership." With data centers under construction one would think they would have examples of successes or projects in progress available for reference. They'd claim credit if they had it so the silence is telling. Big tech has consistently valued profit and growth above good stewardship; the onus is entirely on OpenAI t…

...provide air coverage for Texas leadership. The GOP runs Texas. The governor, sec of state, AG, and both houses are republican. Since when have they ever wanted or needed air coverage?

All major cities in Texas are democratic powerhouses, the margin has been closing year on year

Re: Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas

#233

Post by foco_tubi »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #210
foco_tubi wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prop 13 is why housing is expensive in California. Full stop. It was a bandaid over a wound and now the body has sepsis.

If that's supposed to explain it then why is housing also expensive in Massachusetts or Colorado? It's ~18% more in California than Massachusetts but ~313% more in Massachusetts than Oklahoma.

Massachusetts and Colorado arrived at expensive housing markets through other means, but as far as I know they don’t have any sort of massive lock-in incentive like Prop 13.

Re: Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas

#234

Post by vablings »

BobbyTables2 wrote: post #179
kdheiwns wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I very much realize it. I know companies are doing it. But the angry responses to my comment shows that literacy is lacking in Texas because I said it's political suicide to run on it as a platform. Ken Paxton, who is running for Senate and currently serves as attorney general, proudly announced cracking down on "solar scams": https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/attorney-... Plus his campaign site make…

I think he’s more like a broken clock that is still right twice a day… I’ve seen too many solar panels installed on the north side of a house, under a tree.

A bifacial 500w panel will still generate significant power even under shade. I have seen people installing on north-south gable end walls and still making many kW throughout the day in overcast cloudy UK

Re: Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas

#235

Post by officeplant »

cpburns2009 wrote: post #188
goatlover wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Infrastructure for what? To push AI, crypto and gambling on everyone? How about build this "infrastructure" in the back yards of billionaires? They should have plenty of land.

There's a 100% chance this very website you're arguing on is hosted in one if not more data centers.

and 100% chance we could all largely benefit by it vanishing overnight.

Re: Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas

#236

Post by cpburns2009 »

officeplant wrote: post #235
cpburns2009 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a 100% chance this very website you're arguing on is hosted in one if not more data centers.

and 100% chance we could all largely benefit by it vanishing overnight.

No one is forcing you or me to be on here.

Re: Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas

#237

Post by micro2588 »

watwut wrote: post #214
micro2588 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as I wish it were different I think this would be the outcome under any administration. Natural gas in the USA is just stupidly cheap inflation adjusted, is energy dense, power plants require few land resources, pipeline infrastructure exists, robust and deep supply chain, etc. I don't hold much hope of the USA kicking the habit as it is such a competitive advantage. If we don't burn it locally it will be exp…

Biden was not paying companies to NOT build windplants. No, the result would not be the same. Provably so. Also, in fact, companies turned to Trump because democrats started to be serious about anti trust actions.

During the Biden administration almost 40 trillion ft^3 of natural gas was produced annually breaking all records. I do agree the policies of energy were more all the above during Biden and renewable build outs were incentivized additional to record gas production.

I think the biggest material factor between the two administrations is coal capacity factors on the grid are increasing again which would not happen under an alternative admin. We were on a good path towards phasing out coal completely primarily with natural gas and an increasingly significant amount of renewable energy.

Re: Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas

#238

Post by quickthrowman »

spongebobstoes wrote: post #198
strangeloops85 wrote: post #174

Gotta love how all the companies' platitudes about sustainability become ludicrous as they begin burning natural gas at prodigious scales. But don't worry, "AI will solve climate change" so we can just pump extra CO2 now, right guys? I am deeply, deeply cynical and honestly angry about these companies and their self-righteous protestations of being ethical, or public benefit corporations or whatever. Anthropic is ben…

I think your anger would be better placed with the institutional barriers to building clean energy in America that prevent these infrastructure companies from doing the right thing transmission via HVDC is extremely difficult to build due to land permitting and right of way laws grid interconnections take 5+ years just to get approved, let alone built only 2 nuclear power plants have been built since 1978, each takin…

> transmission via HVDC is extremely difficult to build due to land permitting and right of way laws

It’s also really expensive due to the equipment that needs to be in place at either end of the HVDC link. Switching HVDC current is challenging and expensive, the stations at each end are hundreds of millions of dollars and around an order of magnitude more expensive than AC transmission stations. If you’re operating on the same grid frequency, it’s almost invariably more economic to run AC transmission lines. Voltage drop can be dealt with by transformers stepping up the dropped voltage periodically.

Re: Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas

#239

Post by micro2588 »

vablings wrote: post #231
micro2588 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as I wish it were different I think this would be the outcome under any administration. Natural gas in the USA is just stupidly cheap inflation adjusted, is energy dense, power plants require few land resources, pipeline infrastructure exists, robust and deep supply chain, etc. I don't hold much hope of the USA kicking the habit as it is such a competitive advantage. If we don't burn it locally it will be exp…

The whole idea that a solar panel needs to be backed up by gas is absolutely asinine. We live in a capitalist society if there is so much excess power in the day and little power during the night then that means there is money to be made by storing that energy then doing arbitrage with daytime vs nighttime rates. Build the solar panels and the battery will come because there is serious money to be made as the differe…

I agree I don't think it will always be the case but in the 1-5 year term the economics dictate that is what you get, full battery backup to run something like a data center is expensive even if technically feasible. It is not 1:1 backup but significant additional marginal gas production is going to come online with battery and solar build outs, that is what you see in grid queues across the US.

You are ignoring the fact that batteries like many other flex grid assets have diminishing marginal returns to arbitrage power. That is why you see them in composition with other flexible base load resources in a market system. We could reform the system to have other objectives.

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