Wouldn’t it be cheaper in the long run to just put solar panels all over the buildings and parking lots, and maybe some surrounding fields, and an array of batteries to run off of at night? Maybe add some wind mills too, seeing as Texas generates a tremendous amount of power with wind already.
“some fields”, “parking lots”, “maybe some windmills” is a wildly vast under estimation of what would be required to do it.
7.65GW is A LOT.
The USA doesn’t even have an active 1GWh solar farm today. It’s 900MW, and it is 4600-5000 acres and is 1.3 million panels
To run batteries off that, you need to 3-4x that would be a 30GWh generation capacity battery to run in the non sun periods and give some buffer for bad weather. Then you need a massive battery as well to store it all. It would need to be able to run at least for a couple days, which means it needs to store 367.2 GWh (48h storage), so my solar numbers above are actually probably wrong since you won’t fill that up in 1 day, but maybe that’s okay if the size is just an emergency amount. 122GWh battery would probably the be minimum for a perfect summer condition 100% of the time day/night cycle.
The largest upcoming battery installation in the USA is 1.15 GWh, which is not built yet.
I’m not saying don’t do it, but you’ve really glossed over the sheer scale of it, and I doubt they’d be able to easily put the solar field near the datacenter, so there’s extra costs around transmission lines as well.
Edit: For 30GW of solar you’re looking at around 153,333 acres, or about the size of Dallas Texas, before the battery storage
I concede that my grasp of the scale involved was unrealistic. However, I don’t see a viable solution. The issue, I have realized, isn’t how to generate the power, it’s the scale of power needed to run these data center monstrosities.
So if solar and wind (with batteries, of course) would be very challenging, it is at least vaguely possible. Texas is a great state for wind, solar, and geothermal power. It already generates about 30% of it’s power from renewables. Texas has a lot of sunny days and a lot of open spaces for wind farms particularly in the western parts of the state. I can think of worse ideas than covering all those oil fields with solar panels or wind farms. You wouldn’t even need to stop producing oil. You can do both.
Nuclear really isn’t viable. Starting the approval process now, it would easily be 20 years before a new plant would start producing power. No one is waiting two decades to open their data center.
The only other option to power these data centers, the one they are going with, is fossil fuels. That means multiplying the amount of toxic and greenhouse gasses being pumped into our air which is the absolute worst option for everyone on the planet.
Sure, but first they gotta figure out who owns the sun. How else are they going to inflate their value by aggregating all of the speculative projects they’ll each complete when handed the same $200K cheque that they keep using to pay each other? I mean, is it even business if you don’t lobby for government kickbacks that you’ll get for working together, and then use those kickbacks to buy more politicians?
Data centers need to run 24/7, so you aren’t able to meet the needs with just solar. Additionally Solar is very seasonal (more power during the summer).
Not saying there aren’t ways to making it work, but one natural gas plant vs a mixture of systems is probably cheaper and easier. Especially since the US is currently built around natural gas power.
A single data center is mid double digit MW. They want to build groups of DCs in one location. As someone else said, a nuclear reactor is honestly the most efficient way for them to operate eventually.
unfortunately nuclear reactors take forever to build up, plus the regulatory approval is very slow. and its expensive to maintain. i dont think the techbros think too long ahead. its not as easy as building a coal/gas powerplant.
by the time they are done building one nuclear plant AI wouldve bursted by now.
You’re not wrong. One of the newest reactors to come on line is reactor 3 at Plant Vogtle in GA. After as much as 5 years for the approval process, the reactor broke ground in 2009 and didn’t start producing power until 2023. That’s just shy of 2 decades from start to finish. As much as my wind and solar idea is flawed, nuclear is as much of a non-starter. These folks may want to open their data center a little sooner than 2045.
Wouldn’t it be cheaper in the long run to just put solar panels all over the buildings and parking lots, and maybe some surrounding fields, and an array of batteries to run off of at night? Maybe add some wind mills too, seeing as Texas generates a tremendous amount of power with wind already.
You aren’t thinking about the scale properly.
“some fields”, “parking lots”, “maybe some windmills” is a wildly vast under estimation of what would be required to do it.
7.65GW is A LOT.
The USA doesn’t even have an active 1GWh solar farm today. It’s 900MW, and it is 4600-5000 acres and is 1.3 million panels
To run batteries off that, you need to 3-4x that would be a 30GWh generation capacity
batteryto run in the non sun periods and give some buffer for bad weather. Then you need a massive battery as well to store it all. It would need to be able to run at least for a couple days, which means it needs to store 367.2 GWh (48h storage), so my solar numbers above are actually probably wrong since you won’t fill that up in 1 day, but maybe that’s okay if the size is just an emergency amount. 122GWh battery would probably the be minimum for a perfect summer condition 100% of the time day/night cycle.The largest upcoming battery installation in the USA is 1.15 GWh, which is not built yet.
I’m not saying don’t do it, but you’ve really glossed over the sheer scale of it, and I doubt they’d be able to easily put the solar field near the datacenter, so there’s extra costs around transmission lines as well.
Edit: For 30GW of solar you’re looking at around 153,333 acres, or about the size of Dallas Texas, before the battery storage
Edit: Updated battery figures
I concede that my grasp of the scale involved was unrealistic. However, I don’t see a viable solution. The issue, I have realized, isn’t how to generate the power, it’s the scale of power needed to run these data center monstrosities.
As you say, 7.65 gigawatts is a lot of power. According to ERCOT, Texas just set a new record for power demand in July of 91gw. So this plant, built to supply this one data center complex, will produce power equal to 8.5% as much power as the entire state of Texas required at peak demand this year (so far, anyway). 8.5% of peak demand for the entire state of Texas which, by the way, is the largest energy consuming state. Texas uses about 15% of the total power generated in the entire USA according to EAI.gov.
So if solar and wind (with batteries, of course) would be very challenging, it is at least vaguely possible. Texas is a great state for wind, solar, and geothermal power. It already generates about 30% of it’s power from renewables. Texas has a lot of sunny days and a lot of open spaces for wind farms particularly in the western parts of the state. I can think of worse ideas than covering all those oil fields with solar panels or wind farms. You wouldn’t even need to stop producing oil. You can do both.
Nuclear really isn’t viable. Starting the approval process now, it would easily be 20 years before a new plant would start producing power. No one is waiting two decades to open their data center.
The only other option to power these data centers, the one they are going with, is fossil fuels. That means multiplying the amount of toxic and greenhouse gasses being pumped into our air which is the absolute worst option for everyone on the planet.
Yeah, but big corpo can’t monetize the sun (yet).
This power plant is specced to produce 7.65GW. The Alvin W. Vogtle plant in Georgia, the largest nuclear plant in the US, generates only 4.5GW.
Sure, but first they gotta figure out who owns the sun. How else are they going to inflate their value by aggregating all of the speculative projects they’ll each complete when handed the same $200K cheque that they keep using to pay each other? I mean, is it even business if you don’t lobby for government kickbacks that you’ll get for working together, and then use those kickbacks to buy more politicians?
Data centers need to run 24/7, so you aren’t able to meet the needs with just solar. Additionally Solar is very seasonal (more power during the summer).
Not saying there aren’t ways to making it work, but one natural gas plant vs a mixture of systems is probably cheaper and easier. Especially since the US is currently built around natural gas power.
Businesses are mostly concerned with the short term.
Not enough energy density for a DC. You would need a small nuclear reactor or normal peaker plant.
A single data center is mid double digit MW. They want to build groups of DCs in one location. As someone else said, a nuclear reactor is honestly the most efficient way for them to operate eventually.
unfortunately nuclear reactors take forever to build up, plus the regulatory approval is very slow. and its expensive to maintain. i dont think the techbros think too long ahead. its not as easy as building a coal/gas powerplant.
by the time they are done building one nuclear plant AI wouldve bursted by now.
You’re not wrong. One of the newest reactors to come on line is reactor 3 at Plant Vogtle in GA. After as much as 5 years for the approval process, the reactor broke ground in 2009 and didn’t start producing power until 2023. That’s just shy of 2 decades from start to finish. As much as my wind and solar idea is flawed, nuclear is as much of a non-starter. These folks may want to open their data center a little sooner than 2045.