Electrify Everything

[andy92782]

Internet data centers are fueling drive to old power source: Coal

- - - Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly reported that Prince William County receives $400 million annually in taxes on the computer equipment inside data centers. It receives $100 million annually. In addition, the article incorrectly stated that two FirstEnergy plants...

au.lifestyle.yahoo.com

There, massive data centers with computers processing nearly 70 percent of global digital traffic are gobbling up electricity at a rate officials overseeing the power grid say is unsustainable unless two things happen: Several hundred miles of new transmission lines must be built, slicing through neighborhoods and farms in Virginia and three neighboring states. And antiquated coal-powered electricity plants that had been scheduled to go offline will need to keep running to fuel the increasing need for more power, undermining clean energy goals.

 

[mspohr]

Internet data centers are fueling drive to old power source: Coal

- - - Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly reported that Prince William County receives $400 million annually in taxes on the computer equipment inside data centers. It receives $100 million annually. In addition, the article incorrectly stated that two FirstEnergy plants...

au.lifestyle.yahoo.com

Typical.
The say the only solution is to use coal or build long distance transmission lines.
How about local wind and solar with storage? Faster to implement than the other solutions... plus cheaper.

 

[iPlug]

There was a great Odd Lots podcast specifically on this April 15 titled "How Electric Utilities Will Handle Booming AI Datacenter Demand"

TLDL: It's entirely manageable and doesn't necessarily require us to give up on greening the grid.

The aforementioned Yahoo article scenario posted here is covered by them and paints a potential worst case. More realistically, and already in practice where grids are currently testing the limits of data centers, there are ways to throttle them and they are given the lowest priority for electricity in peak times. The idea is that on a hot summer afternoon the residents get first dibs on electricity for their AC...

It should also be noted that most of this growth will be on the machine learning side, not conventional data centers. While it would be a bad capital expenditure to run machine learning AI data centers only 10-25% of the time when electricity is most off peak, this does not need to happen. In reality, grids have excess capacity 95-99.9% of the year. It's not too hard to throttle or idle such a data center for 0.1-5% of the year when peak events occur and almost all of these events can be predictably forecast. In fact, this will likely stabilize the grid. There is plenty of room to build up grid supply with nearly all renewables. Data centers would be required to pay their part to improve grid infrastructure wherever they land and would have lots of onsite grid strengthening resources like generators (hopefully H2 some day or some other renewable), solar, wind, batteries, etc.

 

[gt2690b]

Typical.
The say the only solution is to use coal or build long distance transmission lines.
How about local wind and solar with storage? Faster to implement than the other solutions... plus cheaper.

or better yet hook a nuke up to that turbine - generator combo and convert the coal to a nuke plant

 

[mspohr]

or better yet hook a nuke up to that turbine - generator combo and convert the coal to a nuke plant

That would take more than 10 years.

 

[gt2690b]

That would take more than 10 years.

2034 sounds good to me

 

[mspohr]

Wow! I had heard of this company delivering health supplies in Africa but wasn't aware of how successful they have been in the US and elsewhere.

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/19/autonomous-drone-startup-zipline-hits-1-million-deliveries.html

The company said its zero-emission drones have now flown more than 70 million autonomous commercial miles across four continents and delivered more than 10 million products.

The milestone 1 millionth delivery carried two bags of IV fluid from a Zipline distribution center in Ghana to a local health facility.

“We need to start using vehicles that are light, fast, autonomous and zero-emission,” Rinaudo Cliffton said. “Delivering in this way is 10 times as fast, it’s less expensive … and relative to the traditional delivery apps that most restaurants will be working with, we triple the service radius, which means you actually [get] 10 times the number of customers who are reachable via instant delivery.”

“The three areas where the incentive really makes the most sense today are health care, quick commerce and food, and those are the three main markets that we focus on,” Rinaudo Cliffton said. “Our goal is to work with really the best brands or the best institutions in each of those markets.”

 

[mspohr]

The fastest energy change in history still underway

In 2023, solar photovoltaics and wind comprised about 80% of global net generation capacity additions. Four times as much new solar and wind electricity generation capacity was installed in 2023 as compared with all other electricity sources combined.

www.pv-magazine.com

Cumulative global solar installed capacity passed 1.4 TW, and cumulative production reached 1.7 TW, which is more than tenfold larger than ten years ago, and it is doubling every 3 years. New solar capacity is being installed faster than anything else in history. Total installed solar capacity surpassed total nuclear installed capacity in 2017; it surpassed wind in 2022, and hydropower last year, and should surpass fossil gas in 2024. At current growth rates of 20% per annum, solar will pass coal in 2025 to become the largest component of global generation capacity. Current growth rates also suggest that solar will reach 9 TW in 2031, and there will be more solar generation capacity than everything else combined.

Electrification of everything” eventually allows solar and wind to displace fossil fuel from most functions via electric vehicles, electric heat pumps, electric furnaces, and electrolysis of water to produce hydrogen for chemicals (reduction of metal oxides, ammonia, fertilizers, plastics, synthetic jet and shipping fuels).

 

[gt2690b]

The fastest energy change in history still underway

In 2023, solar photovoltaics and wind comprised about 80% of global net generation capacity additions. Four times as much new solar and wind electricity generation capacity was installed in 2023 as compared with all other electricity sources combined.

www.pv-magazine.com

Cumulative global solar installed capacity passed 1.4 TW, and cumulative production reached 1.7 TW, which is more than tenfold larger than ten years ago, and it is doubling every 3 years. New solar capacity is being installed faster than anything else in history. Total installed solar capacity surpassed total nuclear installed capacity in 2017; it surpassed wind in 2022, and hydropower last year, and should surpass fossil gas in 2024. At current growth rates of 20% per annum, solar will pass coal in 2025 to become the largest component of global generation capacity. Current growth rates also suggest that solar will reach 9 TW in 2031, and there will be more solar generation capacity than everything else combined.

Electrification of everything” eventually allows solar and wind to displace fossil fuel from most functions via electric vehicles, electric heat pumps, electric furnaces, and electrolysis of water to produce hydrogen for chemicals (reduction of metal oxides, ammonia, fertilizers, plastics, synthetic jet and shipping fuels).

Lol there's only been 2 nukes brought online in like 15 years in the US

 

[mspohr]

Six Airlander 10 Aircraft to Enter Service in the Scottish Highlands and Islands

A new partnership is taking the Airlander 10 closer to real-world operations in the Highlands and Islands area before the end of this decade

www.autoevolution.com

 

[Madeindex.org]

Wow! I had heard of this company delivering health supplies in Africa but wasn't aware of how successful they have been in the US and elsewhere.

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/19/autonomous-drone-startup-zipline-hits-1-million-deliveries.html

The company said its zero-emission drones have now flown more than 70 million autonomous commercial miles across four continents and delivered more than 10 million products.

The milestone 1 millionth delivery carried two bags of IV fluid from a Zipline distribution center in Ghana to a local health facility.

“We need to start using vehicles that are light, fast, autonomous and zero-emission,” Rinaudo Cliffton said. “Delivering in this way is 10 times as fast, it’s less expensive … and relative to the traditional delivery apps that most restaurants will be working with, we triple the service radius, which means you actually [get] 10 times the number of customers who are reachable via instant delivery.”

“The three areas where the incentive really makes the most sense today are health care, quick commerce and food, and those are the three main markets that we focus on,” Rinaudo Cliffton said. “Our goal is to work with really the best brands or the best institutions in each of those markets.”

I read about them a while ago, did not know they became so successful! Great

 

[mspohr]

Electrify California industry

earthjustice.org

If you asked a random smattering of folks to name the largest manufacturing state in the country, I suspect you would hear a lot of folks say Michigan, or perhaps Pennsylvania. I don’t think many would peg California as the nation’s largest manufacturing state, but it is. From food manufacturing to glass to cement, we have more manufacturing jobs in California than any other state in the country. This is something we should be proud of, but we should also look squarely at the downsides.

This year, Assemblymember Marc Berman introduced AB 2083, which directs the state to start creating that blueprint. The bill directs the California Energy Commission to work with other agencies to look at these issues and draft an electrification roadmap. It creates the space to get the best minds together to make this the sector formerly known as “hard to decarbonize.”

 

[mspohr]

Giant Batteries Are Transforming the Way the U.S. Uses Electricity

They’re delivering solar power after dark in California and helping to stabilize grids in other states. And the technology is expanding rapidly.

www.nytimes.com

That’s now changing. Since 2020, California has installed more giant batteries than anywhere in the world apart from China. They can soak up excess solar power during the day and store it for use when it gets dark. Those batteries play a pivotal role in California’s electric grid, partially replacing fossil fuels in the evening. Between 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. on April 30, for example, batteries supplied more than one-fifth of California’s electricity and, for a few minutes, pumped out 7,046 megawatts of electricity, akin to the output from seven large nuclear reactors.

 

[nwdiver]

How insanely idiotic to have a gas connection someplace as warm as Mississippi.

2 gas explosions days apart killed 1 and left many worried and questioning safety​

 

[mspohr]

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/13/opinion/electricity-demand-surging.html?smid=nytcore-android-share

To keep the lights on, many utility companies are proposing to build dozens of new power plants that burn natural gas. North Carolina-based Duke Energy alone wants to add 8.9 gigawatts of new gas-fired capacity — more than the entire country added in 2023. Using their own projections of soaring energy demands as justification, these companies are also pushing back on the climate targets set by their states and the Biden administration.


The real reason the utilities want to build these plants is quite simple: The more stuff they build, the more money they make. Regulators let utilities charge their customers enough money to cover what they spend on assets like combustion turbines and wires, plus a generous rate of return (up to 10 percent) for their investors. This longstanding arrangement incentivizes power providers to build expensive things whether society needs them or not, in lieu of lower-cost, cleaner options, and to invoke their duty to keep the lights on as a post hoc rationalization.

It makes sense that Dominion and Duke executives would pursue these potentially lucrative investments; their job is to maximize returns for their shareholders. But utilities aren’t like other shareholder-owned companies. They are granted the right to be monopolies in exchange for providing essential services to society. And regulators’ job is to hold them accountable to the public interest. This century-old model is in dire need of an upgrade, so that utilities can be compensated for achieving goals — such as using clean, affordable energy and building a resilient grid — that are in everyone’s interest.

They include “virtual power plants” — when technologies such as home batteries, rooftop solar systems, smart water heaters and thermostats are linked together and managed via software to provide the same services as a conventional power plant. Utilities in Vermont, Colorado and Massachusetts are already using them, to quickly respond to rising demand at a much lower cost than operating natural gas combustion turbines. According to one estimate, virtual power plants could lower U.S. utilities’ costs by as much as $35 billion over the next decade. Utilities could also accelerate efforts to replace outdated transmission lines with newer ones that can carry double the electric current and to bring more battery storage online. They can compensate customers for using less energy during times when demand is high and invest far more in energy efficiency, helping customers to adopt devices that use less electricity.

Sure, they wouldn’t provide utilities nearly as much money as building new gas-fired power plants. But that’s why public utility commissions must step in to require utilities to make investments that benefit the climate and their customers, without scaring off their shareholders. What’s needed is not more regulation, just smarter regulation.

 

[kpanda17]

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/13/opinion/electricity-demand-surging.html?smid=nytcore-android-share

To keep the lights on, many utility companies are proposing to build dozens of new power plants that burn natural gas. North Carolina-based Duke Energy alone wants to add 8.9 gigawatts of new gas-fired capacity — more than the entire country added in 2023. Using their own projections of soaring energy demands as justification, these companies are also pushing back on the climate targets set by their states and the Biden administration.


The real reason the utilities want to build these plants is quite simple: The more stuff they build, the more money they make. Regulators let utilities charge their customers enough money to cover what they spend on assets like combustion turbines and wires, plus a generous rate of return (up to 10 percent) for their investors. This longstanding arrangement incentivizes power providers to build expensive things whether society needs them or not, in lieu of lower-cost, cleaner options, and to invoke their duty to keep the lights on as a post hoc rationalization.

It makes sense that Dominion and Duke executives would pursue these potentially lucrative investments; their job is to maximize returns for their shareholders. But utilities aren’t like other shareholder-owned companies. They are granted the right to be monopolies in exchange for providing essential services to society. And regulators’ job is to hold them accountable to the public interest. This century-old model is in dire need of an upgrade, so that utilities can be compensated for achieving goals — such as using clean, affordable energy and building a resilient grid — that are in everyone’s interest.

They include “virtual power plants” — when technologies such as home batteries, rooftop solar systems, smart water heaters and thermostats are linked together and managed via software to provide the same services as a conventional power plant. Utilities in Vermont, Colorado and Massachusetts are already using them, to quickly respond to rising demand at a much lower cost than operating natural gas combustion turbines. According to one estimate, virtual power plants could lower U.S. utilities’ costs by as much as $35 billion over the next decade. Utilities could also accelerate efforts to replace outdated transmission lines with newer ones that can carry double the electric current and to bring more battery storage online. They can compensate customers for using less energy during times when demand is high and invest far more in energy efficiency, helping customers to adopt devices that use less electricity.

Sure, they wouldn’t provide utilities nearly as much money as building new gas-fired power plants. But that’s why public utility commissions must step in to require utilities to make investments that benefit the climate and their customers, without scaring off their shareholders. What’s needed is not more regulation, just smarter regulation.

We need expert energy engineers to analyze and potentially counter these new generation plant requests questioning why not sure batteries. Which we all here want.
Problem is, AI and overall increased online activity is driving more compute resources required.
Batteries can replace the old peaker plant spike, but worst address the overall increase in demand alone.
New green generation is not out pacing the increases while also displacing the existing demand.
The govt needs to push harder for green energy use.

 

[mspohr]

We need expert energy engineers to analyze and potentially counter these new generation plant requests questioning why not sure batteries. Which we all here want.
Problem is, AI and overall increased online activity is driving more compute resources required.
Batteries can replace the old peaker plant spike, but worst address the overall increase in demand alone.
New green generation is not out pacing the increases while also displacing the existing demand.
The govt needs to push harder for green energy use.

 

[kpanda17]

He

does not address this unanticipated new demand of AI and new data centers
But thanks, very good analysis

 

[nwdiver]

He

does not address this unanticipated new demand of AI and new data centers
But thanks, very good analysis

It does to some degree. The primary point is the primary energy fallacy. Just the shift to renewables reduces primary energy consumption by ~70%. It's even greater if data centers can be co-located in urban areas and the waste heat can be scavenged for district heating.

 

[mspohr]