alt Hacker NewsThis is true, but I'm pretty firmly of the opinion that these data centres shouldn't be built, or at least allowed to operate until/unless they can be powered cleanly and without cornering the market and driving out existing consumers of power.
If they're so keen to build that they're willing to fund power generation (e.g. on site gas generators) then it should be clean/renewable (solar, wind, small modular reactors, full scale nuclear plants, whatever).
Degrowth is bad but so is ignoring the planet, the environment, and people's health to get ahead faster in business.
Replies
vasco • today at 1:25 PM
The need for memes knows no bounds. In short order the majority of power usage worldwide will be for compute and newer generations will wonder how it took so long.
Make all DCs provide their own power and suddenly they’d be large amounts of solar and battery in cheap scrubland
A typical US DC costs about $35b per GW. Solar and battery would increase that to about $45b.
Then during summer it would generate so much excess power that it would run all the domestic air conditioning you could need.