alt Hacker NewsExactly. Over in Virginia 37 datacenters use close to 3GW of electricity. The power utilities and overarching transmitters are looking at projects to ship some of that electricity (which requires ~700kV transmission). Two projects in the works are at $18B between them.
$18B to provide redundancy and not have to require schools and local government to limit electricity use and provide a bit more slack in the powergrid is a burden that all the users get to share. Lucky them. Yes, all users benefit, but lucky break for those datacenters, getting all that redundancy for power, without a $500M/ea bill.
That's great to hear that we have at least somewhat decent voltages. I thought America was still sort of piddling around with mostly 500kV and under power distribution.
It's not a huge power multiplier (P = VI, so linear), but in principle I do love the idea that if you are going to have these massive transmissions lines we ought use the conductor well, at good high voltages.
China has been doing 1MV and 1.1MV lines for a while now, which is so excellent to see. https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/article/20241113-will-chinas-ul... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-voltage_electricity...