Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by Terr_ | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Terr_

> 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".

View on HN

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.

There's no inevitability to the use of gas turbines. How about a carbon tax?

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?

When do you think Elon's gas turbines will be taken off-line?

When the economic incentive to run them is costlier than a viable alternative.

If in a year Mississippi said "Plants are ready to deliver on that power purchase agreement you signed, at a lower cost than onsite turbines" then they'd be turned off.

Yet instead of a PPA, xAI contracted with TVA for wholesale power, is building their own dedicated turbines, and is using mobile turbines temporarily.

None of that helps the regional electricity market, because it's not integrated.

Why billionaire get lollipop to behave? Just set limits to pollution.

I think part of them problem is that xAI is ALREADY operating more gas turbines than they have permits for.

IMO data centers themselves are environmentally unobjectionable, but gas turbines are loud polluters and it should be almost impossible to get permits for more than a few months at a time.

The existing law could be used to stop them just fine but Trump has no interest in that.

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com