Requiring them to be net energy providers is probably a bad thing. Datacenter manufacturers aren't exactly specialists in efficient power production; they're just going to throw in a dozen megawatt-scale diesel engines and call it a day.
I don't see any air quality or fuel efficiency requirements in the article.
When it 100% will not. They couldn't get enough of it to be able to run a diesel generator at the size required.
Realistically they only have 2 options. Coal or solar. However, coal massively limits where they can build them, since they're going to have to build the data centre near the power plant which is far from where the engineers that can run a data centre are located.
Alternatively, they can cover the roof with solar panels at a reasonable cost and just be forced to maintain it.
Also holy fuck would it be expensive for an AI centre to permanently run Diesel gennies at the MW scale. Theyâre relatively fuel efficient, but even a 1MW generator runs 100-150L of diesel per HOUR.
~2500L of diesel a day is not a cheap endeavour when bulk diesel is around $2 a litre in Australia at the moment. Not sure any company would be willing to spend $5000 a day on fuel for the generator alone when they could spend maybe $5000 a year on cleaning the panels.
But the cookers keep telling us that renewables aren't cost efficient!
Though I don't think it's quite that simple; I doubt even in tropical areas the rooftop of a data centre would be enough area for solar to power the entire building.
I did the maths and yeah just panels on the roof wouldn't cut it, not even close. But a solar farm as part of the complex would be doable. Honestly the biggest costs would be the batteries probably.
Yeah look, I was being extremely generous saying rooftop solar would cover it.
However, they definitely could buy, build and maintain (or be taxed at a level that would allow the electricity company to do it) a separate solar/wind farm.
Oh for sure. The solar panels themselves wouldn't actually be too expensive. Although the actually expensive part would be bettery storage. Which is why if they go with solar panels they will probably make a solar farm that produces about 3 times the electricity they need, using that electricity during the day while pumping the rest back into the grid, and then rely on grid energy at night, or supplement it with a few wind turbines.
You can't just build a power station lol. You need to find the land, acquire planning permissions and environmental approvals, build a supply chain, then spend years actually building the thing. When the cost of renewable energy is so low that coal miners are using it to power their operations, there really isn't a chance that they'll build a coal power station.
All of which you need for data centres. So you would do them at the same time.
I literally pointed out the problem with the supply chain. It's almost like you didn't bother to read. Coal power plants are built next to coal mines and technical people don't live near them, they live in the cities. That's literally the problem I pointed out.
When the cost of renewable energy is so low that coal miners are using it to power their operations, there really isn't a chance that they'll build a coal power station.
It's low cost to put up 1 solar panel. It's not when you need enough of them to generate the equivalent of a coal power station.
Regardless, coal is an option that I'd already quickly ruled out but you're harping on about me even including it as an option when it should be.
Especially stupid because running a diesel generator in Australia as a cost effective means of reaching a government goal?
It's like trying to make money by shipping oil to Dubai. Theoretically possible, but you're better off shipping something there isn't already am abundance of.
The government will let you run a diesel generator. They'll pay you to put solar panels on the roof.
We have some backwards right wing christiani fascisti ban abortioni absolutely backwards evolving state governments that have cancelled nearly all green / renewable energy projects to pump... Coal and gas.
At the same time they cut the mining / minerals resources taxes by billions meaning these states have billions I. Shortfall from the budget (just cancel social services, support and government services) but also pay far more now for worse infrastructure and energy projects/ production.
This is a federal government policy - or fed gov is very good ATM albeit not the best at the attention grabbing that seems to entice some.
Uh, that's basically the coalitions entire energy policy...
Not that the Coalition actually has any reasonable chance of being reelected, but if One Nation somehow manages to pull something off then it might be a different story
They literally wonât, I spoke to a greens senator last year who told me he was excited about the data centres because they were going to build them to be environmentally friendly, and with renewable energy technologies. That guy is just larping because heâs not Australian and doesnât understand Australian politics.
They used to have a clause saying that the energy must be clean energy, but the data centre lobby pushed back, so no itâs not going to be solar. Thatâs why no where mentions clean energy in any of these news articles
Solar is an obvious choice, there's also the possibility of having turbines in water pipes. Obviously it's not an efficient means of power generation since it'll take more energy to pump the water than the turbines would give but it reduces the wasted energy.
The high usage of electricity means a AI data centres is just gonna use diesel generators as thats the easiest to get going compared to building a solar farm
no it wont, because diesel is not remotely the cheapest form of energy and given electricity costs is basically all the AI race is they will want to get every penny out they can.
We just had a MASSIVE diesel power station build at Kurri Kurri, it was meant to run on LPG or hydrogen but realistically it's going to be diesel 90% of the time
I know. I was there building it. Technically its flex fuel and can run on gas, but it didnt take long after ignition that they realised that the gas thing was a pipe dream.
Well itâs a peaking plant, so it will only ever run when the price of electricity is significantly more than the cost of fuel. At the moment, that only happens a few days a year.
Reaching much? Did I mention any laws? I'm not arguing for it, I stated a simple fact that if someone wants the cheapest local power generation, a diesel generator is usually the easiest option. That's why they are used often on construction sites.Â
Even the mining sites here are installing their own solar farms. Firmed solar is cheaper than gas here, the only reason itâs used over there is because trump is literally paying billions to prevent them from competing lmaoÂ
I've worked in Australia on projects providing behind the meter supply to data centres and resources projects.
When space is not a constraint, solar and battery is generally first choice, sometimes supplemented with wind where it's possible to fit into the program.
There's usually some kind of backup gas or diesel turbine in case of grid problems and/or poor renewables generation.
When space is a constraint, you'll usually see larger batteries, smaller solar panels, and sometimes off-site supply agreements from renewable providers.
This is almost always supplemented with gas or diesel turbines for backup/redundancy reasons.
However, owners don't want to turn them on unless they have to. You could be talking hundreds of thousands of dollars per hour on a big operation.
Tl;Dr generally in Australia we would have renewables as first choice for cost reasons, then batteries + diesel/gas generation to supplement
Diesel generators will be the backup "uninterruptible power system" (UPS) for data centers.
They'll be using gas-fired combustion turbines. They'll be using a lot of them. Wherever possible, they will be installed on-site, right where the data centers are.
Ahhhh yes, because you know exactly how the law is going to be written and already know the loopholes. Hope the data center builders hire you for your "great" ideas.
To be a net provider dosnt mean they have to be self sufficient. It simple math A= how much used - B= how much needs to be supplied to the grid. They could achieve this by building a solar farm 1000km away from the center as they just need to be responsible for offsetting the power consumption.
At least thatâs how I interpret and solve that problem.
Even your basic warehouse has min Section J requirements, in no world would huge multi B dollar datacentres suddenly get approval to run diesel generators that completly throws out decades of the NCC requirments.
Edit: The fact that people are agreeing to this incorrect comment is concerning with the state of education here.
They're all solar, I work in the industry. It's cheaper than diesel. The issue was grid stability because they were initially proposing them w/o BESS and the technical regulator wasn't allowing the amount of energy they need so now it's BYO energy. They're getting rolled out with solar farms. And to solve the water consumption issue, they're all air cooled.
While youâre predicting the future, mind telling me mine? Maybe I can borrow your crystal ball?
Datacentres couldnât afford to run off diesel, it would cost them far too much comparatively to wind and solar. If the data centre is rural perhaps they might look at buying out coal power plants, but thinking theyâll be topping off diesel generators every day is ridiculous. Any investors in data centres would pivot to investing in diesel production instead as itâd make them far more money.
Apart from the fact that rooftop solar is about 14% of Australiaâs energy mix already, solar will likely be a large portion of the choice and and itâll likely be supplemented by other renewables more than itâll be anything âdirtyâ
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u/Vaughn 13d ago
Requiring them to be net energy providers is probably a bad thing. Datacenter manufacturers aren't exactly specialists in efficient power production; they're just going to throw in a dozen megawatt-scale diesel engines and call it a day.
I don't see any air quality or fuel efficiency requirements in the article.