And in the mean time, western europe is having its second heat wave even before summer starts.
If Europe was as willing to drill for gas as the US is, they'd probably be able to run more ACs and save thousands of lives every year.
Chevron signs 20-year power agreement with Microsoft for West Texas data center
81–90 of 169 posts
Re: Chevron signs 20-year power agreement with Microsoft for West Texas data center
#82The current natural gas price in West Texas (the WaHa hub, north of Coyanosa, TX) is negative. And has been for a while. The price peaked (dipped?) to -$9/MCF a couple months ago. That means gas producers had to pay $9 per MCF for it to be taken away. Oil in the Permian comes with gas, a lot of it, so to produce oil, you need to get rid of gas. Wells I'm familiar with have 4000-5000 cubic feet of gas per barrel of oi…
This might make sense for oil producers to get rid of their natural gas, which is nearly a waste material, but I'm struggling to understand how it makes sense for Microsoft. Despite the cheap natural gas, and an abundance of investors and builders with natural gas expertise, in the competitive electricity generation market everybody is deploying solar and batteries in west Texas because it's still more profitable tha…
Natural gas is cleaner to burn than coal, if I had to guess this is lazy half-done greenwashing, i.e. 'at least it's not coal!' Similar to California's measures for cleaner power generation.
Re: Chevron signs 20-year power agreement with Microsoft for West Texas data center
#83Re: Chevron signs 20-year power agreement with Microsoft for West Texas data center
#84With all the fracking in the USA, literally exponential growth, one of the things they do is gas burn off for months, sometimes years at all the sites Why not use all that wasted heat energy to power all these datacenters? (and why not build the datacenters at the Bakken formation) You can see the burnoff from SPACE and it's for months at a time at each location, tell me that does nothing to global temperatures? (loo…
> Why not use all that wasted heat energy to power all these datacenters?
Probably not profitable enough to set up the infrastructure to capture, store, transport, and sell that as a product. Profit potential is the only factor that matters to decision makers.
Re: Chevron signs 20-year power agreement with Microsoft for West Texas data center
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
The cost of gas is completely irrelevant. In order to bring a new large load onto the grid, you have to coordinate with ERCOT, and they just made that process more tedious. Once you get your grid connection approved and built out, you have to source your own power anyway, and frankly there just isn't enough power on the market to realize the stated datacenter buildout goals in this country. In short, you're going to…
> Gas is the cheapest, fastest zero-to-production choice for onsite power generation, and has been for a long time. Is it, though? There's a ton of projects out there waiting to get their solar on the grid in west Texas, partnering with one of them and launching the project early while waiting on the interconnection queue, and adding enough batteries, gives a more robust solution right now without the SPOF nature of…
>Is it, though?
When you can colocate across the street from someone who's otherwise paying to get rid of it is.
When the fuel is free-ish who cares about backorder on turbines. You can run big diesels on NG (just like the pipeline people do).
Re: Chevron signs 20-year power agreement with Microsoft for West Texas data center
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
And despite that, when there's any sort of price pressure, like there is for new electricity grid additions from investors, solar and batteries completely dominate the choice over natural gas in Texas. Look at the map for 2026 of the grid buildout in Texas at the bottom of this page: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67205 All solar and batteries (yellow and black), with a few tiny blue dots for gas. It…
This is just a guess, but is the reason the same one that the gas is cheap all the way out in BFE west Texas? In other words, even if you could generate electricity from wellhead gas more cheaply than a bunch of wind turbines, solar panels, and batteries just west of Fort Worth, can you actually export it to east Texas where all the demand is? The solution here being: let's build our giant demand machine directly on…
> let's build our giant demand machine directly on the steppe and skip all that expensive infra, because data is much cheaper to move than energy.
Who cares if it's cheaper. It's that you're moving less of it. The more processing you can do near the source the smaller and cheaper your pipe out to the consumer can be.
Cut the tree on the hillside. Mill it in the valley. Then spend your precious boxcar volume shipping only the finished lumber out of the valley.
Re: Chevron signs 20-year power agreement with Microsoft for West Texas data center
#87> A majority of the generation will come from large GE Vernova turbines and associated electrical infrastructure, with additional capacity provided by Solar Turbines, a wholly owned subsidiary of Caterpillar Inc. Solar turbines is an interesting name for a gas turbine company. "It's green energy, we put solar in our name"
Quick search shows the reason is nothing to do with your sarcasm. Its origin is traced back to a 1929 company, Solar Aircraft Company. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Turbines
How is this sarcasm? I had almost the exact same thought in earnest: A gas turbine company being called Solar Turbines is quite interesting and unexpected if you're not familiar with that particular corporate history.
Re: Chevron signs 20-year power agreement with Microsoft for West Texas data center
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
West Texas is like Costco for natural gas. There are cases where the fields can produce more than the pipelines can carry away. If you put your gigantic gas turbines right next to the fields you can obtain access to some extremely cheap fuel. They might even pay you to burn it sometimes. Negative gas prices are a thing.
And despite that, when there's any sort of price pressure, like there is for new electricity grid additions from investors, solar and batteries completely dominate the choice over natural gas in Texas. Look at the map for 2026 of the grid buildout in Texas at the bottom of this page: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67205 All solar and batteries (yellow and black), with a few tiny blue dots for gas. It…
Because management at big tech could give any shits about you or where they live.
It’s easy to see.
Re: Chevron signs 20-year power agreement with Microsoft for West Texas data center
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well what I'm saying that is that on the Texas grid, solar and storage and wind are the cheapest energy, and being deployed in massive amounts because only on the Texas can an investor make money by providing the cheapest energy. (For most utilities, they take a fixed rate of profit and are incentivized to use the most expensive possible energy if they can get away with it.) So Texas is not a laggard when it comes to…
> What this tells me is that like most hyperscalers, Microsoft is not price sensitive on the electricity side, What this should likely tell you, is that you are missing information and have an incomplete picture of the situation. Or it could be MSFT just likes to spend extra money for no reason because they are simply stupid. I'm gonna go with the former though. I'd be interested in all these behind the meter setups…
Maybe this counts, although it isn't built yet:
https://www.datacenter-forum.com/edora/eurowind-energy-and-e...
There are many datacenters in Denmark with decade-plus power purchase agreements from a specific wind farm, but with so much news recently I can't find if there's any operational with their own supply.
Re: Chevron signs 20-year power agreement with Microsoft for West Texas data center
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
Quick search shows the reason is nothing to do with your sarcasm. Its origin is traced back to a 1929 company, Solar Aircraft Company. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Turbines
How is this sarcasm? I had almost the exact same thought in earnest: A gas turbine company being called Solar Turbines is quite interesting and unexpected if you're not familiar with that particular corporate history.
Not sure why it would be so contentious. I simply provided a reference to the why instead of commenting with a joke, sarcasm or whatever you feel like calling it.