alt Hacker NewsI'm very curious what happens now to the several gigawatts of fuel cells, that this project supposedly purchased to supply power.
> "Oracle signed a deal with solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) developer Bloom last year for 1.8GW of power, expanding it to 2.8GW of capacity in April."
https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/new-mexico-regula...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom_Energy
I was surprised to read we're already building fuel cell power plants on this scale (this is a first of its kind project—by far this startup's largest customer). I didn't realize the tech was that mature. Now I'm left wondering if they actually ever intended to, or whether this was some kind of circular financial-engineering vaporware.
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Oh that's a fun use - I'd heard some data centres were using fuel cells/mains-gas as a back up power source but using it as main power is interesting.
I thought fuel cells were an energy storage system, not an energy generation system. Surely it’s cheaper to just connect the data center to the generation directly (either by upgrading the grid to handle it or building generators nearby).
They can be resold, they have great value for anyone wanting to provide their own power to a DC. Demand is so high they might be able to make a profit.
The tech has always been mature enough but simply too expensive. But since combustion engines are sold out for the next years, data centers are rushing to get anything they can. So the extra millions for power generation will be a rounding error