alt Hacker NewsImagine the additional space needed to power a scaled DC with solar. I think the number of people opposing the construction would increase when they release its half the county.
But what's an extra 500 acres between friends.
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A Technology Connections video recently changed my opinion on this. The land required to power the entire U.S. would be less than the farmland we currently use for ethanol production.
Horrifically pessimistic numbers for PV (winter in maine with conversion efficencies half what they are now)... comes out to about a 50x50 mile square of panels to generate the entire USA's power demand from the most recent DOE numbers. Ignore that we can have wind, solar, and crops* in the same area. Turns out, btw, crops don't like high noon beating down on them. As a result we can reduce water usage and get nearly the same crop yield if part of the field is covered with panels- at least according to some studies.
> I think the number of people opposing the construction would increase when they release its half the county.
What's the math on that?
It's interesting to see the US mandate ethanol production the way they do, which could be argued to be a farm subsidy, and then balk at the land needed for solar installations.
It still makes more sense to directly regulate the thing that actually matters. People don't really care about the presence of a DC in their state. They care about the effect it might have on energy prices and potentially the effect it might have on public land use. You can always regulate the electricity market and public land use directly, instead of regulating the construction of data centers which is more of a second-order effect.
These approaches might very well result in the same outcome: fewer DCs, but it leaves the details up to dynamic market forces.