alt Hacker NewsWhat about renewables + battery storage? Does it take much longer to build? I can imagine getting a permit can take quite a long time, but what takes so long to set up solar panels and link them to batteries, without even having to connect them to the grid?
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Reciprocating natural gas engines can be moved from [concrete] pad to pad and be up and running in under 24 hours. The portable turbines take longer but they’re still fast.
Acquiring enough solar panels and battery storage still takes a very long time by comparison.
The density required for solar is also much lower - the coordination between different land parcels and routing power and getting easements increases the time required vs. on prem gas turbines.
Takes much longer to build, requires a much larger up-front investment, and requires a lot more land.
The footprint needed when trying to generate this much power from solar or wind necessitates large-scale land acquisition plus the transmission infrastructure to get all that power to the actual data center, since you won't usually have enough land directly adjacent to it. That plus all the battery infrastructure makes it a non-starter for projects where short timescales are key.
land. compute what surface you need for 1 GW of solar
How many batteries is that? If we're talking solar and you have say a 300MW datacenter and you need it to operate for 12 hours without sun you need at least two of the largest battery install in the world[1] at 1700MWh. That doesn't factor cloudy days.
[1] https://www.heise.de/en/news/850-MW-World-s-largest-battery-...