Juicing up for MOAR Juice: Soaring demand for Electricty

[RE]

WE NEED...MOAR POWER!!!

The numbers being discussed in this article are staggering.  Doubling and Tripling the power currently being transmitted across the grid in the most power hungry and consumptive consumer of electrons on earth, the FSoA.

The article talks about these numbers with a straight face, as though this is even remotely possible in the short time span they think it will be necessary.  All of a sudden, "out of the blue", projections for the amount of power needed for all the AI, Data Centers and Crypto mining the capitalists desperately seek is rocketing into the stratosphere in orders of magnitude leaps and bounds.

We're going to NEED (sic) thousands of miles of transmission capability built, 1000s of "clean" Nuke Puke plants ncluding Fusion which still hasn't left the laboratory stage of development, much less become commercially viable.  Holes 1000s of miles deep are going to be drilled to access limitless Geothermal Power as well to feed the insatiable lust for more power.

The simple equation  MOAR POWER=MOAR MONEY is driving GREED to hitherto undreamed of levels, and apparently the folks who have all these Data Centers and Crypto Mines on their drawing boards believe they can make it happen.  All they need to do is streamline (aka eliminate) regulations and turn them loose and we'll light up the Universe with the bright green glow of money flowing through the wiring of the FSoA.

Does anybody here believe this shit?  Believe even that they realistically think can do it, much less actually do it?  Clean, carbon free power for all the EVs, all the heating and cooling, all the EV Flying Carz/Air Taxis and Superconducting Supercomputers dreamed of by every Billionaire Tech Futurist after consuming 10 tabs of Sandoz acid?

Boggles the mind.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/03/07/ai-data-centers-power/

Amid explosive demand, America is running out of power

RE

[K-Dog]

Northern Virginia needs the equivalent of several large nuclear power plants to serve all the new data centers planned and under construction.

Do you think pretending they are in Singapore adds to the cost?  Northern Virginia watches us 24-7?

That is snarky, don't answer.

Your article is a WA-PO article.  I don't know if Bezos is still the richest, but Bezos owns the WA-PO. Which means three letter guvmint agencies in Northern Virginia need the equivalent of several large nuclear power plants according to your article. 

Nowhere in your article is there ANY mention of limits, or does the ability to provide extra power come into question from a technical point of view.  The article advocates unregulated capitalism as much as it is talks about power.  The need to 'deregulate' is brought up.  The article is pure 100% FSOA propaganda.  Environmental costs?  No need to mention them as the article is important for national security.  Any mention of downside is unpatriotic.  Only a domestic terrorist would put out such misinformation.

The A.I. to watch us 24-7 consumes a lot of power.  Every post is scanned for content.  This post and yours (since they are paired) should be under 'Revolution' so the bots can't see them without logging in.  I moved them.

If extra capacity is built the need for power will only increase more. <-- Jevon's paradox.

[RE]

Nowhere in your article is there ANY mention of limits or does the ability to provide extra power come into question from a technical point of view.

That is the scariest part of the article, even scarier than the amount of power they are talking about here or the amount of $MONEY$ it would take to pull off this techno-futuristic wet dream.  That whoever wrote it could get through the entire article without once questioning the plausibility of it being done, and the fact there are actually corporations and real estate developers speculating on land where they think/want all the power plants and data centers to be built.  I thought the mania involved with building the tallest skyscraper in the FSoA in the middle of fucking Oklahoma City a the precise moment commercial real estate is cratering was the height of human stupidity, but this article demonstrates human stupidity is INFINTE!

Where do these folks think they will get the money for this?  They think municipalities can float enough bond issues competing to build these things in their neighborhoods?  Including transmission lines which aren't even inside the boundaries of some muni?  The FSoA is going tofinance it with a ne Electricity Administration like they funded the building of the Eisenhower Interstate Highway system?  That's what it would take at minimum, and that was done in an era when the FSoA was fresh off the Big Win in WWII and cheap energy was popping out of the ground everywhere Jed Clampett shot and missed a squirrel on his property.  Today we can't even service the old debt we have without borrowing more just to pay interest, and they thin the Federal Goobermint will be able to do this with the Full Faith & Credit of the FSoA?  The Bond Vigilantes have all been lobotomized?  What?

I can't even fathom how many $TRILLIONS$ it would take to pull this off, or how the smartest guys in the room will work out some sort of plausible financing scheme that will project a moderate 10% rise in the cost of your electric bill over the next 50 years will pay for it all, no problem.  Some dipshit Congress Critter will propose the new Agency and Plan, and POTUS Trumpovetsky will appoint his son Don Jr to handle all the real estate leases and Goobermint contracts for the build out.  Can you IMAGINE the graft and skimming that would go on with this insanity?  Who cares if it could ever be built, the money will be flowing like Niagara Falls before the first brick is laid or wire strung anywhere, and in 5 years there will be half finished and abandoned projects all over the country, like Chinese Ghost Cities and Bridges to Nowhere.

Only in Amerika.

RE

[K-Dog]

This sounds better.




Only in America
Can a guy from anywhere
Go to sleep a pauper and wake up a millionaire

Only in America
Can a kid without a cent
Get a break and maybe grow up to be President

Only in America
Land of opportunity, yeah
Would a classy girl like you fall for a poor boy like me

Only in America
Can a kid who's washin' cars
Take a giant step and reach right up and touch the stars

Only in America
Could a dream like this come true
Could a guy like me start with nothing and end up with you

Only in America
Land of opportunity, yeah
Would a classy girl like you fall for a poor boy like me

Only in America

[RE]

'Right now every-one's getting caught flat-footed' by a rising demand for electricity that a five-year-old child could have predicted years ago.

Well, at least we here on the Diner have the ability of your average 5 year old to make common fucking sense predictions like this.  I've been writing for years now that pushing enough power across the grid for the projected All-EV transportation fleet was unachievable, and I wasn't even concerning myself at the time with AI, Data Centers, Crypto Mining and heating homes with electricity, which has long been considered too ipractical and expensive in Northern climates.  Only in southern states were McMansions built with just electric heat until just recently.  Since all these additional loads have been added, I redoubled my claims it was absurd.  Does anybody listen to me?  Of course not, I'm not a Tech Billionaire or Oil Industry shill.

Now, this writer from The Spectator is finally standing up an article saying how absurd this is, but WHERE THE FUCK has he been for the last 5 years, and where has TS or Wired or Scientific American been?  Where has anyone from the Energy Industry been or politicians writing laws mandating transition to electric power been?  The Energy industry is loaded with jackasses with Ph.Ds telling us there's power aplenty if we just drill baby drill, but they don't have enough CFS to know you can't deliver the power without the grid infrastructure.  See, that's not their department.  To paraphrase Tom Lehrer and Werner Von Braun, "Vonce zee Oil comes up, I don't care how eeet goes round, zat's not my department says Werner Von Braun"

So now they're going to frantically try to drop micro nukes at every data center to power it, and at every Truckstop to charge up the big rigs.  Except of course there's so far not even ONE of these micro nukes currently functioning ANYWHERE in the FSoA.  Microsoft will be given a blanket approval to self regulate their own electricity production, because of course the are such responsible citizens looking only to improve the lives of all their customers.

It's all so laughably incompetent it makes the Keystone Kops seem like solid police work in comparison.  Regardless of what they try to do, there simply is no way they can meet the numbers and timeline they set.  Failure is baked in the cake.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/going-electric-requires-electricity-who-knew/

Going electric requires electricity. Who knew?

RE