[LeifCarrotson]

I work in industrial manufacturing and automation, several of my customers (those running steel foundries, aluminum die casting, plastic recycling and extrusion, and other power-intensive processes) represent a sizeable fraction of the utility usage in the small towns in which they're located.

They often have an individual contract with the utility and participate in load regulation: when you need liquefy a few tons of steel, those heaters have a lot of thermal inertia. If A/C loads are high they'll turn the power down, if wind output is high, they'll turn it up, and so on.

Do data centers participate in the same sort of dynamic pricing and power adjustment? I understand that they're spinning up and powering down instances on demand, and that those demands are somewhat outside of their control, but are they able (and willing, and desirous of reducing their electric bills) to dynamically adjust compute in response to utility rates?

[mrguyorama]

A lot of the problem right now is simply that new massive data centers are crying about being forced to.... pay their fair way.

They are mad that they aren't getting special treatment. They want to be treated better than the aluminum smelting plant.

[infecto]

It’s a hard to answer because each grid will treat it differently. My own experience when trying to track some of this data down, DCs are largely having to do the same and that’s why a lot of the buildout includes behind the meter generation to make up for it.

There is not a good picture in aggregate though so it creates all kinds of narratives.

[axus]

The gas-powered generators are what makes a data center unpleasant to live by.

[infecto]

Hyperbole if I have ever seen it. Absolutely there are specific outliers (x ai) but this is not the norm.

[officeplant]

Of the data center rollouts I've been contracted to do safety systems for, ALL of them have gas turbines as part of their power infrastructure on property. They don't solely have gas, but they are mixed Solar/Gas every time.

A few of them in the future pipeline swear they will have nuclear but I don't see that coming to fruition soon.

[infecto]

And is that datacenter bypassing air quality regulation and backing up to a housing development? Most/all of the construction I have tracked meets air quality guidelines and fairly remote but I know that is not always the case!

[officeplant]

>air quality regulation

This is texas, they can't even form regulations that don't different between counties, or figure out zoning laws in Houston.

[esseph]

Depending on what an "AI datacenter" means, their loads don't fluctuate nearly as much as something like a smelter.