| ▲ | gumby 9 hours ago |
| Why aren’t the dot centers bribing the locals with infrastructure? DC needs a GW of capacity? Build 3 GV, put 2 into the grid at low cost, build out transmission? It used to be standard that companies would build infrastructure along with their plants. Cities all across the US Midwest were built this way. |
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| ▲ | imightbebatman 14 minutes ago | parent | next [-] |
| The social contract of -- progress will make your lives better too -- is dead. We need to force it to come back or things will get really bad for most people. |
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| ▲ | Terr_ 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > Why aren’t the dot centers bribing the locals with infrastructure? It might be that they can't. (Well, not without spending even more money or time.) They're looking for power which: 1. Fits on-site, rather than needing more space or being far away and dependent on the grid. 2. Can be ramped up on-demand, to keep their stuff running if there's a blackout. 3. Prioritizes their facility with "first dibs" when there are brownouts or other issues. 4. Can be built quickly so that they can finish the facility and start selling/renting. These requirements are tend to conflict with the goals of making cheap power for sale: An offshore wind-farm might mollify local ratepayers, but it doesn't do anything for their facility reaching "ready". |
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| ▲ | ethbr1 an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | This is a perfect argument getting in the way of a good solution. There's nothing to stop hyperclouds from finishing it with temporary nat gas behind the meter now and striking long-term power purchase agreements that fund extra utility build-out. They're not doing that because (a) it costs more and (b) nobody has made them. Hopefully that'll change with a bluer Texas, new Congress, and more assertive municipalities. There's a trivial path to win/win here, if the companies were universally required to enter into sustainable deals (both financially and environmentally). Even playing field nationally = no particular cloud wins by finding the rube locality that will accept a bad datacenter deal. | | |
| ▲ | Zigurd an hour ago | parent [-] | | There's no inevitability to the use of gas turbines. How about a carbon tax? | | |
| ▲ | ethbr1 30 minutes ago | parent [-] | | It's hard to beat the immediacy of trucking in turbines. Framing this as an either/or leads to bikeshedding. Why not allow them the now solution and mandate a better intermediate-term relacement? | | |
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| ▲ | imightbebatman 15 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | That's part of the problem. The irrational rush. But there's a bigger problem going on here. Our elites no longer believe in the social contract. They intend to crush the rest of us beneath their boot. They need to be brought back to heel before they do and we enter another dark age. |
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| ▲ | AnthonyMouse 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| If you offer to add a bunch of offshore wind turbines or build a new nuclear plant, what happens? It's basically "address NIMBY opposition by doing something that incurs NIMBY opposition". The real problem is that politics has gotten so broken that people have lost the connection between building things and having them. You'll have the same people opposing new generating capacity while complaining about high electric bills. |
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| ▲ | hnav 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Vogtle 3/4 cost 30B and took 15 years for 2GW. Gas turbines pollute and need gas infrastructure. Solar needs better batteries. |
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| ▲ | Leonard_of_Q 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | So, cut the red tape which makes building a new nuclear power plant take 15 years, standardise on a few type-approved installations, get enough battery storage built to replaced most peaker plants. Do it already, stop this endless discussion which has led nowhere for the last 30-40 years. | | |
| ▲ | Zigurd an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Vogtle had massive cost and time over runs because the modular design didn't deliver on efficiency, it did the opposite by having modules show up on site that needed rework. But the project management couldn't be allowed to factor that in because it would've shown everybody that you can't do this stuff on time and on budget. Unless you can demonstrate that those problems are solved, there is no credibility to nuclear power. It doesn't need to be an endless discussion, the discussion has concluded that nuclear power is too expensive and too late to be relevant. | |
| ▲ | ethbr1 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Or revisit an idea from the 60s, updated with modern technology, and start series-producing large reactors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offshore_Power_Systems The current industry has a voracious appetite for power. There are a variety of solutions capable of cleanly supplying it (solar, wind, nuclear). What's missing is the shared infrastructure investment and guaranteed revenue stream contracts to link the two. This is where government industrial policy has historically and successfully stepped in (e.g. shipyards, railroads, electrification, interstate system, heavy press, etc). Hell, guarantee waived species environmental inspections as part of the government's contribution. | |
| ▲ | 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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