Texas Needs Equivalent of 30 Reactors to Meet Data Center Power Demand
Texas Needs Equivalent of 30 Reactors to Meet Data Center Power Demand
"In order to protect uptime of our glorious data centers, neighborhoods will begin experiencing rolling brownouts to reduce demand."
- Texas soon probably.
So why is it the duty of our country to gather all electricity possible for the richest people to waste on burning out GPUs so they can lose money on free chatbots?
For the same reason housing should be a speculative investment, and healthcare services available only to the highest bidder.
Data centers need to bring their own power.
In a well regulated way that includes oversight, yes.
To a significant extent, they do, contracting for construction of generation and transmission (very often renewable), at least at the largest scale.
But, it's (mostly) all on the grid.
With demand like that, it's not like there isn't significant negotiation with the local power company, especially because they're frequently built a significant distance from existing large power infrastructure.
Heck, all the big 3 cloud providers signed deals for nuclear generation in the last few months. https://spectrum.ieee.org/nuclear-powered-data-center
Here's just one more article about these sorts of investments: https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/clean-energy/google-has-a-20b-plan-to-build-data-centers-and-clean-power-together
Heck, all the big 3 cloud providers signed deals for nuclear generation in the last few months. https://spectrum.ieee.org/nuclear-powered-data-center
Subsidized by US taxpayers ... If data center flops, we pay hold the defaulted loan
If demand is there, microshit get cheap nuke energy and operator makes profit...
Where is the benefit to the taxpayer?
A few job and chatgpt flooding internet?!
Clown fucking world
The one state that refuses to connect to the interstate power grid and has Uber-like surge pricing on electricity? Yeah, I'm sure this won't result in regular people footing the bill for more billionaire profits.
Texas is a joke, but not a good one.
Uber-like surge pricing on electricity
We don't really: that story you heard from a few years ago was the only company that billed like that. The customers made a bet that the pricing averages through the day (lower at night, higher cost during the day) would average out in their favor over fixed-cost billing, and frankly, it did right up until it didn't.
They took a risk and got bit by, frankly, not understanding how the system works and basically ate the spikes.
Everyone else paid $0.09/kwh or so during that whole period, and the electric providers ate the cost because when you're averaging out spikes across millions of kwh, it won't lead to bankruptcy.
They took a risk and got bit by, frankly, not understanding how the system works and basically ate the spikes.
It's the exact same idea as insurance. You don't buy insurance because you think you'll take the insurance company for a ride, you buy insurance to even out your costs. If someone hits you, you don't need to fork out tens of thousands of dollars for medical bills and repairs, but you will fork that out over time instead with more manageable payments.
If you don't want to see scary bills, then pay a little higher average prices so you end up with a consistent bill.
Texas pays 11 dollars per kilowatt hour. Far lower than left wing states and has a manufacturing base. The market grid bids down prices for the right to sell electricity. That is one major reason companies move to Texas. Louisiana and Oklahoma, and states may be cheaper, but they don't have a manufacturing base.
Every Texan I know has a generator to deal with the unreliability of the grid, and there's never been an article about someone in Iowa getting a surprise $100k electric bill...and the average wage in Texas is substantially lower than in "left wing" states like California or Washington...so not sure you're making an apples-to-apples comparison, but time will be the judge, we can all check-in in a year and see how this plays out. Does Lemmy have a remind me! bot?
How many do they need in the winter, tho?
Yeah, build that many minus 10-20%, and fill in the rest with solar, wind, etc. That way you get a good mix of base level production and burst demand.
One of the windiest, sunniest, emptiest places on earth and they want to waste water building reactors instead of renewables.
Hell, the geology means you can store energy in the ground using pressurized air.
What? I've grown up around people in the nuclear industry, and nothing I've ever learned about the function "wastes" water.
Some rambling on how I understand water to be used by reactors
You've got some amount of water in the "dirty loop" exposed to the fissile material, and in the spent fuel storage tanks. Contaminated water is stuck for that use, but that isn't "spending" the water. The water stays contained in those systems. They don't magically delete water volume and need to be refilled.
Outside of that you have your clean loop, which is bog standard "use heat to make steam, steam move turbine, moving turbine make electiricity, steam cools back to water". Again, there's no part of that which somehow makes the water not exist, or not be usable for other purposes.
Not saying you're wrong. Renewables are absolutely preferable, and Texas is prime real estate to maximize their effectiveness. I'm just hung up on the "waste water building reactors" part.
Guessing it was some sort of research about the building process maybe, that I've just missed?
Hmm harness the holy light of the sun?
But what about all that holy black ooze?
But what about all that unholy black ooze?
Demon blood made of 666 particles
First 0 nuclear reactors will be built anywhere in US before 2035.
Texas is actually a renewables leader because, believe it or not, it has the least corrupt grid/utility sector, and renewables are the best market solution.
Even with 24/7 datacenter needs, near site solar + 4 hour batteries is quicker to build than fossil fuel plants and long transmission, and it also allows an eventual small grid connection to both provide overnight resilience from low transmission utilization fossil fuel as peakers anywhere in the state as well as export clean energy on sunnier days.
Market solutions, despite hostile governments, can reduce fossil fuel electricity even with massive demand surge. One of the more important market effects is that reliance of mass fossil fuel electricity expansion and expensive long high capacity transmission, would ensure a high captive cost at high fuel costs because of mass use, in addtion to extorting all regular electricity consumers. Solar locks in costs forever, including potentially reducing normal consumer electricity costs.
"The least corrupt/utility sector" I must be thinking of the wrong Texas, which one are you referring too?
I think they mean "the same forces that led to the grid collapsing every few years -- prioritizing profit above all else, and the government giving zero fucks-- are the same forces which trigger new development to be in renewables with zero regulation or oversight"
Conservatives always write about their broken-clock-right-twice successes in a similar way.
Compared to California, where everything is done to increase customer rates, or most other states where long wait lines to connect power occur, you can measure effective corruption by how much energy additions are made, including home solar. You can be critical of their exposure to power system failures, but that doesn't make the system corrupt.
near site solar + 4 hour batteries is quicker to build
But is it quicker at scale? Can solar and battery production keep up with expanding demand? Can it continue to do so over 10+ years? Can it outpace demand and start replacing fossil fuels?
Usually the proper solution is a mix of technologies. It shouldn't be solar vs nuclear vs wind, but a mixture.
Nuclear does a great job at providing a large amount of energy consistently. It's really bad at fluctuations in demand, and it's also really bad at quick rollout. I think it makes a lot of sense to build nuclear in Texas over the long term because it can start filling in demand as efficiency of older panels and batteries drop off, which extends the useful life of those installations and reduces reliance on battery backups.
I also think hydrogen is an interesting option as well, since it's sort of an alternative to batteries, which can be hard to get at scale. Use excess generation for electrolysis and use those for mobile energy use (e.g. trucks, forklifts, etc) or electricity generation. It's also not ideal, but it could make sense as part of a broader grid setup.
Solar is awesome and we need more of it. I just want to encourage consideration of other options so we can attack energy production from multiple angles.
Can solar and battery production keep up with expanding demand?
China is expanding so fast that they are accused of overproducing, and so supply capacity is not only there, it can increase further.
Usually the proper solution is a mix of technologies. It shouldn’t be solar vs nuclear vs wind, but a mixture.
The main benefit of wind is in battery reduction. A capacity equal to lowest night demand. Wind often produces longer hours than solar per day. The predictability of solar allows clear power forecasts, and then enough solar for needs with a small grid connection allowing both monetizing surpluses, and having resilience in shortfalls. Nuclear has no economic or climate roles, for being both too expensive and of too long a delay.
I also think hydrogen is an interesting option as well, since it’s sort of an alternative to batteries,
Hydrogen is the solution for having unlimited renewables and being able to monetize all of their surpluses. It is a bonus to be able to provide emergency/peak power, including renting a vehicle to have bonus value of powering a building. For today, backup fossil fuel generators can still provide resilience value to solar.
So, exactly one uranium patch with a mk 3 miner stuffed full of slugs? Not including waste reprocessing or alternative recipes?
Seems satisfactory to me.
Sounds like Texas will be a nuclear waste dump soon.
Well, Texas certainly has the space for it.
Please! It would be such a nice improvement!
I want to get out of here :(
You and me both.