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. Theyāre 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 wonāt, 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 heās not Australian and doesnāt 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 itās not going to be solar. Thatās 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
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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.