Las Vegas' dystopia-sphere, powered by 150 Nvidia GPUs and drawing up to 28,000,000 watts, is both a testament to the hubris of humanity and an admittedly impressive technical feat | PC Gamer
Las Vegas' dystopia-sphere, powered by 150 Nvidia GPUs and drawing up to 28,000,000 watts, is both a testament to the hubris of humanity and an admittedly impressive technical feat | PC Gamer
The Las Vegas Sphere might have an impressive spec sheet, but its energy demands are almost as staggering.
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Currently, an agreement is under review to ensure that 70% of the Sphere's power needs will come from solar sources, with the other 30% from non-renewable energy that will be offset by renewable energy credits.
Nevada has pledged to achieve net zero emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050, and the solar project under construction to help offset its energy debt is estimated to complete in 2027.
How stupid is it that somebody can claim “Net Zero” greenhouse gas emissions when 30% of their power is greenhouse gas.
Just gonna throw this out there. Fuck credits, charge a carbon tax.
We'll also ignore the fact that that solar could have been used to offset actual needs instead of this BS.
If only Las Vegas were located somewhere that the sun shines almost all day every day. \s
I highly doubt the operating hours of this ball of decadence match the time when solar power peaks
If only the creators of the ball had enough profit coming in to put up more solar panels and build up a battery bank for the night so they wouldn't take anything from the grid...
And yet they still couldn't cover the last 30%.
That's probably at night
So build concentrated solar power and store the heat for after the sun sets. Bonus - thermal power plant turbines give inertia to the grid, which photo-voltaics don't.
Regardless, that energy could be going to offset other energy currently being produced by non-renewables no matter which way you slice it.
Vegas exists because of the BS.
The word net does a lot of heavy lifting and it’s just a scam
You can use 100% coal power and claim net zero by buying a forest
Well you don't understand what "net" means.
It doesn't mean literally zero. It means colunm A and column B average out to zero.
To acheive a real net zero, they have to save energy somewhere else that takes that column past 100% (Such as if their solar panels produce more energy than they use during certain times.)
They probably just make some shit up to say their are saving extra somewhere they aren't (so to that point, yes...credits are bullshit.)
Fuck credits, charge a carbon tax.
IMO it seems RECs are a better solution than carbon taxes at least in situations like this. With RECs you're buying renewable energy to offset non-renewables, with a carbon tax the company is just giving the government money for use of non-renewables. Only funds spent on RECs in this case actually go to supporting the renewable energy sector. I'm no expert in this stuff so I could be off, just how I understand it.
Maybe, I mean just maybe, they can run this thing only as long as the solar generated power lasts, and then turn it off 30% of the time.
Run it at 70% percent brightness.
Oooh, this is a good idea
They never claimed net zero. They plan to achieve net zero by 2050
Yeah, that’s in the quote. I’m more complaining about the concept of “net zero”.
Exactly. Carbon credits for the win! I love me some Pigouvian taxes. :)