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We Found the Hidden Cost of Data Centers. It's in Your Electric Bill [video]

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156 points xbmcuser | 1 comments | 04 Sep 25 12:33 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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fibers ◴[04 Sep 25 13:17 UTC] No.45126940[source]▶
I was looking into energy markets and how they work and it is truly a cluster of moving parts all along the Eastern Interconnect. The question is when is the shoe going to really drop? You can only keep prices going up on an inelastic good before something really bad happens, and this doesn't even touch climate tail risks like heat sagging tx lines across the grid.
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boringg ◴[04 Sep 25 14:13 UTC] No.45127504[source]▶
Energy markets are deeply complicated markets. They are heavily regulated and have a lot of challenges outside of strictly cost of power. Worth remembering they have safety requirements, uptime, national security implications, truly the backbone of our economic welfare.

Only upside I see out of this huge demand for electricity -- hopefully nuclear will clear the deck on using coal, gas and diesel. If we can build and operate nuclear again we can level our long term cost of power. Combined with renewables its a good combo.

Other than that - power prices will always be derivative to the price of natural gas.

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fibers ◴[04 Sep 25 14:20 UTC] No.45127578[source]▶
After looking at Vogtle 3/4 I highly doubt any admin including this one is willing to bear the cost.
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boringg ◴[04 Sep 25 14:32 UTC] No.45127725[source]▶
Vogtle is bad example. It was the first of its kind after a long stagnation of nuclear builds (US no longer has the ability to build and operate new nuclear) - that and the regulatory/licensing costs blew through the roof.

Vogtle is the wake-up call needed to get nuclear manufacturing/talent going again. I hear you but I think you are taking the wrong lesson.

I will add -- if indeed prices stay at Vogtle then yes Nuclear is dead. That said there's no way thats the new pricing going forward.

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1. mikeyouse ◴[04 Sep 25 15:17 UTC] No.45128253{3}[source]▶
Vogtle is an excellent example - it literally had a negative learning rate from construction of reactor 3 to reactor 4 (Reactor 4 cost more and took longer even though we ostensibly learned from building Reactor 3). The "West" has lost the ability to build mega projects, and until we regain that ability, nuclear is indeed dead. Some minuscule part of the issue is the licensing and regulatory regime, but it's a complete cop-out to lay the entirety of the blame there.

The UK is in the exact same boat with Hinkley C -- initially licensed in 2012 with a budget of £18 billion, construction starting in 2016 and a completion date in 2025. Now we're looking at £50 billion in cost with 'best case' start dates in 2030. All of that to generate electricity at over $0.20/kwh wholesale.