According to Google, Texas currently has about 87GW of peak capacity & a data center production pipeline that will require 75-100GW. So the state will have to basically double its peak capacity to supply power to all those new data centers.
Using solar to cater to demand increase from data centers will compound the issue.
The 2021 grid failure was triggered by a winter storm which had 3 effects: pushed up energy demand for heating, kneecapped solar generation, and caused failures in bringing up backup sources online (because operators didn't invest enough in "winterizing" their equipment)
They only have 12 years of proven natural gas reserves left so you should take up whatever issues you have w/ lack of natural resources w/ mother nature. Most of the new capacity they are planning to build are natural gas & coal plants. Renewables are not reliable enough for data centers.
Question, how do you think the entire infrastructure around you that you’ve taken for granted your whole life was built?
If you were asked, would you have voted to allow the building of your own home, the infrastructure and roads around it, and the businesses whose tax revenue funds your local municipality you suddenly are so concerned about?
One of the most bizarre contradictions of this current moment is the simultaneous anger at things being expensive and also anger towards building anything. Even on this supposedly 'intellectually-minded' forum the extreme irony flies over the heads of most.
> If you were asked, would you have voted to allow the building of your own home, the infrastructure and roads around it, and the businesses whose tax revenue funds your local municipality you suddenly are so concerned about?
My town isn't perfect in those terms but it's probably about as good as possible, so yes I would have. Of all the places I've lived, tho, there's certainly lots of thing I would have opposed, given the chance, like all those highways.
> If you were asked, would you have voted to allow the building of your own home, the infrastructure and roads around it, and the businesses whose tax revenue funds your local municipality you suddenly are so concerned about?
If there were proper studies on the environmental and economic impacts, instead of blindly building without due diligence. The issue is that data centers are being built without this kind of analysis, at huge cost to the surrounding communities.
> One of the most bizarre contradictions of this current moment is the simultaneous anger at things being expensive and also anger towards building anything.
This seems like you're being purposefully obtuse, given the context in long thread you're replying to. It's not against "building anything", it's data centers which harm the surrounding communities.
Hate to confront you with reality, but if you're in the US, 95% of the infrastructure around you was built in a world prior to the sham obstructionist cudgel of "environmental impact studies" even existed.
So the answer is no, you would not have voted to build everything around you that currently exists.
Btw, have you ever looked into how your municipality funds its services and where that tax money comes from? I have some bad news for you.
Thanks for telling me how I think. If we're doing that, let me tell you how you think: you don't care about people and want to pursue profit over human life, and will go to any length to defend a private corporation over the people who have to live with the negative impacts of its poor decisions.
Not sure if you're aware of this, but a large portion of the infrastructure that was built before environmental impact studies existed caused severe health issues for the surrounding communities, including cancer and death. That's why we have environmental impact studies now.
Yes, and as with everything humans do as a mob, the pendulum tends to swing way too far in whatever direction the memes are trending.
We saw Erin Brokovich and then proceeded to block the building of literally everything. But it turns out there's a middle ground between "Mass cancer and death" and "total ban on new things."
If I'm incorrect that you don't just have a gut reaction to anything new being built, can you articulate exactly what about Datacenters is uniquely bad in comparison to anything else humans build (factories, houses, warehouses, malls, golf courses, pools, etc) that you believe needs to be stopped?
Would you be happier if we de-centralized data-centers as hardware in everyones homes and re-classified their resource usage as residential (basically where things are headed if we keep down this path)?
Or do you not like the idea of resource usage at all, even if residential and renewable? Are we afraid of wasting the sun's precious energy? Are we afraid water used in a data center is somehow destroyed and can no longer enter the water cycle?
The previous failure was in 2011, and didn't happen again until a decade later. The root cause hasn't been resolved since 2021: the demand and weather conditions simply haven't recurred since.
Yes, it's just tiring to hear the same meme putdowns about how this Winter we're all going to suffer when we probably have less brownouts etc than a lot of other places.
I remember 2011 but I didn't actually have any issues with a power failure it was just extremely icy. These are freak weather events, generally the grid holds up fine. I'm not saying we don't have issues but it is kind o foverblown.
> I didn't actually have any issues with a power failure it was just extremely icy.
Maybe ask someone who lost power - or lost a loved one - and find out if they are as sanguine about the icy conditions. People died. "It's not a big deal since I wasn't personally affected" isn't a scalable position, but it is a quintessentially Texan attitude.