4 ms·

Batteries (and giant multi-to. spinning wheels, which serve the same purpose) are not a long term power supply. They are intended to only bridge the couple minu

Batteries (and giant multi-to. spinning wheels, which serve the same purpose) are not a long term power supply. They are intended to only bridge the couple minutes until generators can come online and provide stable power. So yes, it’s expected that they drained, the question is why didn’t the generators come online?

ksec 7y ago
That is a good question. but if I had to guess, Judging from the scale, the "Generator" would have to be a power plant? I.e It is not feasible to have generators to operate at this Scale?
- jsjohnst 7y ago
  Funny you should ask, but the parent company of said fab actually builds and sells generators of the appropriate size. Outside that, have you not seen a multi-building data center complex? The power demands aren’t that different.
- jsjohnst 7y ago
  > It is not feasible to have generators to operate at this Scale? Getting an exact figure on how much utility power they use is proving difficult, but let’s shoot on the very high side and say it’s 100MW. It’s fairly easy these days to buy generators that put out 10MW of power and are either diesel or natural gas powered. Price wildly varies based on a number of factors, but even on the very high end that would cost $50M for ten such generators. The facility itself was in the multiple billions range to build, so the added cost would be a rounding error. The environmental hazards alone due to losing containment, let alone how much the outage costs in lost business, seems pretty logical to me then that the generators existed. So the question really is, was it incompetence (unexpected failure of backup systems) or malice (good excuse to justify constraining supply)? We will likely never know.
- londons_explore 7y ago
  Gas turbine power plants aren't that expensive... Lots of sites use them for backup power and simultaneously use them as regular power plants selling power back to the grid.
  - jsjohnst 7y ago
    I was estimating to the very high side to make a point. One can easily get 10MW in the 500k-1M USD range, but I did see some very elaborate setups peaking out near $5M so went with that. Heck, I recently saw some on Alibaba for $100k, but I highly doubt Toshiba/WD would buy from there.

ksec 7y ago

That is a good question. but if I had to guess, Judging from the scale, the "Generator" would have to be a power plant? I.e It is not feasible to have generators to operate at this Scale?

jsjohnst 7y ago
Funny you should ask, but the parent company of said fab actually builds and sells generators of the appropriate size. Outside that, have you not seen a multi-building data center complex? The power demands aren’t that different.
jsjohnst 7y ago
> It is not feasible to have generators to operate at this Scale? Getting an exact figure on how much utility power they use is proving difficult, but let’s shoot on the very high side and say it’s 100MW. It’s fairly easy these days to buy generators that put out 10MW of power and are either diesel or natural gas powered. Price wildly varies based on a number of factors, but even on the very high end that would cost $50M for ten such generators. The facility itself was in the multiple billions range to build, so the added cost would be a rounding error. The environmental hazards alone due to losing containment, let alone how much the outage costs in lost business, seems pretty logical to me then that the generators existed. So the question really is, was it incompetence (unexpected failure of backup systems) or malice (good excuse to justify constraining supply)? We will likely never know.
londons_explore 7y ago
Gas turbine power plants aren't that expensive... Lots of sites use them for backup power and simultaneously use them as regular power plants selling power back to the grid.
- jsjohnst 7y ago
  I was estimating to the very high side to make a point. One can easily get 10MW in the 500k-1M USD range, but I did see some very elaborate setups peaking out near $5M so went with that. Heck, I recently saw some on Alibaba for $100k, but I highly doubt Toshiba/WD would buy from there.