Direct Current Data Centers • Hacker News Board

Re: Direct Current Data Centers

#51

Post by 627467 » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 3:08 PM UTC

hambes wrote: post #5

it is difficult to comprehend for me that soneone spends all this time thinking through and calculating how to harness as much energy as possible and then wants to use it for large language models instead of something useful, like food production, communication, transport or any other way of satisfying actual human material needs. what weird priorities.

I share the reaction but I'm also aware how easy is it to inventivize (aka subsidize) ineffective old processes in the name of "productive" priorities. The problem is not LLM/DC, the problem is food production, transport and communications are not sexy in a "post-scarcity" (entitled/distracted) societies. People take too many things for granted

Re: Direct Current Data Centers

#52

Post by jabl » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 3:20 PM UTC

To comment on using direct current rather than alternating current, at least NVIDIA is working on 800VDC:

https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/nvidia-800-v-hvdc-architec...

https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/building-the-800-vdc-ecosy...

More generally, a bunch of the electrical industry heavyweights are involved in a standard for DC microgrids called Current/OS: https://currentos.org/

There are certainly advantages to DC vs AC, but there's of course a huge amount of sunken cost in contemporary AC networks.

Re: Direct Current Data Centers

#53

Post by bob1029 » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 4:27 PM UTC

hjoutfbkfd wrote: post #9

bob1029 wrote: post #6

From a purely engineering perspective I think it becomes difficult to argue with the gas turbine once you get into the gigawatt class of data center. The amount of land required for this much solar is not to be understated. In many practical scenarios the solar array would need to be located a distance away from the actual data center. This implies transmission infrastructure which is often the hardest part of any el…

they are talking about covering the desert with solar panels. why would you not put the data center in the middle of it?

Dust, high ambient temperatures, latency, accessibility.

I think the dust is the worst part in terms of operational concerns.

Re: Direct Current Data Centers

#54

Post by phtrivier » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 4:41 PM UTC

EQmWgw87pw wrote: post #32

phtrivier wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Food distribution is still a problem in vast part of the world. Handling food waste is another issue. Climate related shortage are coming soon for us (at the moment they only manifest as punctual price hikes - mustard a few years ago, coffee and chocolate more recently, etc... https://www.euronews.com/green/2025/02/13/goodbye-gouda-and-... https://www.fao.org/newsroom/detail/adverse-climatic-conditi... https://www.fo…

It feels like you didn’t read your own link as he somewhat addressed your concern directly. The idea is simply that AI investment is an “up front cost” to future improvements. To debate against it you would have to provably explain why you think AI will not advance other technologies whatsoever.

I usually don't try to prove things won't happen. I leave the burden of proof to the salesmen. In this case, they have extraordinary claims, so as the saying goes, I wait for extraordinary proofs.

So far they have failed to convince me.

Re: Direct Current Data Centers

#55

Post by hambes » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 5:23 PM UTC

samus wrote: post #35

hambes wrote: post #5

it is difficult to comprehend for me that soneone spends all this time thinking through and calculating how to harness as much energy as possible and then wants to use it for large language models instead of something useful, like food production, communication, transport or any other way of satisfying actual human material needs. what weird priorities.

LLMs and other IT applications have the distinct advantage that they require no other raw materials as input, aside from initial setup, extension, and maintenance. Under these conditions the requirements essentially boil down to real estate and high bandwidth internet connections. Also, demand for AI is currently so high that the solution can be scaled up far enough to be viable. All the other concerns require more s…

demand for AI is not high, which is the current problem of the industry and the reason that AI companies are trying to shoehorn their technology into products everywhere.

these companies and the author of the article are trying to increase capacity for something that barely anyone wants in the software they use, which makes it all the more wasteful.

Re: Direct Current Data Centers

#56

Post by hambes » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 5:25 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #47

hambes wrote: post #5

it is difficult to comprehend for me that soneone spends all this time thinking through and calculating how to harness as much energy as possible and then wants to use it for large language models instead of something useful, like food production, communication, transport or any other way of satisfying actual human material needs. what weird priorities.

>instead of something useful, like food production, communication, transport or any other way of satisfying actual human material needs. what weird priorities. You realize that even pre-AI, that this complaint would still hold for most of tech? Adtech, enterprise SaaS, and B2C apps are hardly "actual human material needs". Even excluding tech, the next lucrative sector would be banking, and same complaint would be ap…

yes, i do realize that. thank you for expanding on my point.

Re: Direct Current Data Centers

#57

Post by dan-robertson » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 6:08 PM UTC

hambes wrote: post #5

it is difficult to comprehend for me that soneone spends all this time thinking through and calculating how to harness as much energy as possible and then wants to use it for large language models instead of something useful, like food production, communication, transport or any other way of satisfying actual human material needs. what weird priorities.

I don’t think that’s a great description of what’s going on here. I think there are two things:

1. The actual thing the authors spend a lot of time thinking about seems to be more generally how to make good use of solar power for things that people find valuable – synthetic fuels desalination, etc – and the implications of the sun only shining some of the time – maybe you don’t want to pay more for more efficient systems as then you want steady power which is more expensive.

2. I think the blog post is a bit of a response to lots of public discussion about AI data centres. IMO seems better to see what someone who thinks a lot about energy has to say than eg, a government suggestion that you delete old pictures to reduce water consumption.

Re: Direct Current Data Centers

#58

Post by samus » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 6:10 PM UTC

hambes wrote: post #55

samus wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs and other IT applications have the distinct advantage that they require no other raw materials as input, aside from initial setup, extension, and maintenance. Under these conditions the requirements essentially boil down to real estate and high bandwidth internet connections. Also, demand for AI is currently so high that the solution can be scaled up far enough to be viable. All the other concerns require more s…

demand for AI is not high, which is the current problem of the industry and the reason that AI companies are trying to shoehorn their technology into products everywhere. these companies and the author of the article are trying to increase capacity for something that barely anyone wants in the software they use, which makes it all the more wasteful.

I agree, the author seems wildly optimistic that all that capacity will indeed be needed in the long run. But I personally hope that it will lead to a breakthrough of solar and battery storage even if demand for AI tanks. If that happens, one could still shunt all that solar energy to other places, either with alternators and overland lines, or by shipping charged grid scale batteries via train.

Re: Direct Current Data Centers

#59

Post by dan-robertson » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 6:17 PM UTC

bob1029 wrote: post #6

From a purely engineering perspective I think it becomes difficult to argue with the gas turbine once you get into the gigawatt class of data center. The amount of land required for this much solar is not to be understated. In many practical scenarios the solar array would need to be located a distance away from the actual data center. This implies transmission infrastructure which is often the hardest part of any el…

For inference you don’t need gpus to be clustered together as much (generally training has lots of synchronisation steps so you can be bottlenecked on that instead of ‘real’ work) as they can handle separate tasks in parallel. But maybe other economies of scale still make you want to put them together (and therefore on average further from the power).

I guess there was a bit of thought about transmission with the reference to high voltages. Another interesting thing: batteries allow you to reduce the needed capacity for transmission lines – if you have batteries near generation and then transmit power at a lower maximum, same average rate than if you only have batteries near use, you can more efficiently use the available transmission.

I guess the main reason for gas to be a problem is if you can’t get new generation (eg lack of turbines).

Re: Direct Current Data Centers

#60

Post by gruez » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 7:00 PM UTC

Joel_Mckay wrote: post #48

gruez wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Borrowing state money that ultimately indentures a country with over-engineered massive boondoggle projects. The datacenters of Meta, Google, Amazon, etc. are primarily funded by the government?

Do they get tax breaks, subsidy, loan deals, and naive non-voting investor money? My point was these folks never gamble with their own cash from revenue. It is always the tax payer that ends up holding the gamblers debts. =3 https://www.usdebtclock.org/

>Do they get tax breaks

The government also has "tax breaks" for certain foods and my 401k. Does that make my evening meal and retirement plan "state money funded" as well?

> loan deals, and naive non-voting investor money?

Well?