I'm not saying wait for an interconnection, I'm saying take a project that already has a fully developed plan, that's waiting for interconnection, and build the DC right there next to it, beef up the battery component of the plan and go to town. Interconnection happens some time in the future, giving far more financial opportunities for everyone, but in the interim the electricity goes fully to the DC.

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alex43578 a day ago | parent | next [-]

Because I expect the economics of enough batteries to carry a data center’s worth of demand through the night and morning is too expensive compared to essentially free natural gas.

Data centers would ideally run at ~100% utilization, so any drop in solar output needs to be fully met by batteries.

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jeffbee a day ago | parent [-]

> Data centers would ideally run at ~100% utilization

I don't think this is broadly accepted among major data center operators.

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pixl97 a day ago | parent | next [-]

Of conventional data centers or one's running GPUs? If you're not saturating your GPUs you're likely leaving money on the table.

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jeffbee a day ago | parent [-]

I don't really agree. The energy component of opex still dominates over the depreciation.

	▲	hollerith 15 hours ago \| parent [-]
		For AI data centers? Depreciation on the GPUs and AI accelerators is a bigger cost than electricity. Now it might be that a new data center will find it more difficult to obtain a reliable supply of electricity than to obtain GPUs, but your statement was about expenses.

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Matticus_Rex a day ago | parent | prev [-]

IIRC ERCOT estimated from their experience it was something like 85% on average?

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rayiner a day ago | parent | prev [-]

What makes you think you can change the facility that's in the ERCOT queue while keeping your place in line?