3 ms·

Solar power is the least suited power source for dataceners other than wind. You need nuclear reactors or other base line power generation energy sources.

bo1024 2y ago
For inference, I agree. For training - the much larger use of electricity - I think solar might be great.
- llm_trw 2y ago
  Turning off the data center for 2/3rds of the year when the sun isn't shining sure is an idea.
  - OutOfHere 2y ago
    In case you forgot, the sun is always shining on the planet, 24 hours a day, every day. The location varies. A global transmission network will fix the availability issue.
    - llm_trw 2y ago
      And nuclear power plants would solve it for a fraction of the cost without the chance of a world wide power grid failure.
      - dalyons 2y ago
        How so? Nuclear power is the most expensive mainstream form of power by a significant margin.
        llm_trw 2y ago
        The price of solar power at midnight is infinite. By comparison nuclear is dirt cheap. People understand the fact it costs money to dig out coal from the ground and bring it to a power station. Yet they don't understand it costs money to take power generated at noon and shift it around. This is never included in the price for solar or wind.
        dalyons 2y ago
        “People” do understand though. If you look at the big energy reports, many of them include solar+storage LCOE numbers, as well as just raw solar. Combined storage numbers are roughly (depending on the report) competitive with coal & gas today, already cheaper than nuclear, and expected to drop fast in the next few years as various battery tech ramps up.
        llm_trw 2y ago
        I've worked as a quant in energy markets and made a very tidy $10,000,000 in one day betting against solar and wind. The people who make those predictions are never held to account and can't find their ass with a GPS. One only need to look at the fact that the best predictor for energy generation prices increasing is how much renewables have entered the grid. Anything over 5% and you start seeing the costs rise upwards.
        ZeroGravitas 2y ago
        https://www.imf.org/-/media/Files/Publications/WP/2022/English/wpiea2022220-print-pdf.ashx https://www.imf.org/-/media/Files/Publications/WP/2022/Engli... > We find that renewable energy is associated with a significant reduction in wholesale electricity prices in Europe, with an average impact of 0.6 percent for each 1 percentage points increase in renewable share. We also find evidence for a nonlinear effect—that is, higher the share of renewables, the greater its effect on electricity prices. On the other hand, while quantile estimation results are mixed with regards to the impact of renewables on the volatility of electricity prices, we obtain evidence that renewable energy has a negative effect on volatility at the highest quantiles. Having people betting on energy markets sounds like a bad thing. When the people betting (and apparently winning those bets) also have false beliefs about renewables raising wholesale energy prices that are contradicted by evidence? Well, at the very minimum, it's not a good look. At worst it's Enron. In Australia the introduction of grid batteries made its money back in slightly over a year not because of buying and selling electricity, but from undermining the price setting collusion of the gas operators.
        ben_w 2y ago
    - umeshunni 2y ago
      Or data centers around the world used for training
    - costco 2y ago
      But transmission losses would be large. There's 3-5% loss per 1000 km. Most countries don't have a power surplus to begin with so they are probably not going to start exporting what they do have to Americans.
  - sangnoir 2y ago
    > Turning off the data center for 2/3rds of the year when the sun isn't shining sure is an idea. reply The logical thing is to place the solar panels where sun shines for more than 1/3 of the year. Additional considerations: DCs are never at 100% utilization,and the hyperscalers won't keep up with their current pace of investment in AI for the next 5-10 years - they will gladly push the power generation CapEx risk onto someone else (existing utilities), and let the taxpayers take the fall.
- pfdietz 2y ago
  Solar is better than nuclear for any application here. And remember, you can do your training in a location that has the world's best solar resource, not in (say) Finland.
OutOfHere 2y ago
Not true. You need a worldwide transmission network that supplies electricity to wherever it is needed. Solar power is available 24x7 on the planet. Long-distance DC transmission technologies have evolved.
- chickenbig 2y ago
  > You need a worldwide transmission network that supplies electricity to wherever it is needed. Now that's a whole bigger challenge than you started out with. The XLinks project [1] is a proposed 3.6GW 4,000 km undersea link from Morocco to the UK. The cost of the inter-connector alone is 11B GBP, so approximately 0.75M GBP per MW-km. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xlinks_Morocco–UK_Power_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xlinks_Morocco–UK_Power_Projec...
  - OutOfHere 2y ago
    Going by your logic, once upon a time, I figure you would have said the same thing for the internet: "Why invest so much in a global communication network when regional servers can work cheaply, and still exchange data by snail mail?"
    - chickenbig 2y ago
      > Why invest so much in a global communication network when regional servers can work cheaply That's the system we have; CDNs, Google Global Cache [0], Netflix Open Connect [1] . Location matters, even for bits and bytes, because infrastructure is expensive. Perhaps you are missing how large and expensive the cables are. See [2] for 2014 cable spec and costings. ---- [0] https://support.google.com/interconnect/answer/9058809?hl=en https://support.google.com/interconnect/answer/9058809?hl=en [1] https://openconnect.netflix.com/en_gb/appliances/ https://openconnect.netflix.com/en_gb/appliances/ [2] https://www.nationalgrid.com/sites/default/files/documents/37783-ETYS%202014%20Appendix%20E%20-%20Technology.pdf https://www.nationalgrid.com/sites/default/files/documents/3...

bo1024 2y ago

For inference, I agree. For training - the much larger use of electricity - I think solar might be great.

llm_trw 2y ago
Turning off the data center for 2/3rds of the year when the sun isn't shining sure is an idea.
- OutOfHere 2y ago
  In case you forgot, the sun is always shining on the planet, 24 hours a day, every day. The location varies. A global transmission network will fix the availability issue.
  - llm_trw 2y ago
    And nuclear power plants would solve it for a fraction of the cost without the chance of a world wide power grid failure.
    - dalyons 2y ago
      How so? Nuclear power is the most expensive mainstream form of power by a significant margin.
      - llm_trw 2y ago
        The price of solar power at midnight is infinite. By comparison nuclear is dirt cheap. People understand the fact it costs money to dig out coal from the ground and bring it to a power station. Yet they don't understand it costs money to take power generated at noon and shift it around. This is never included in the price for solar or wind.
        dalyons 2y ago
        “People” do understand though. If you look at the big energy reports, many of them include solar+storage LCOE numbers, as well as just raw solar. Combined storage numbers are roughly (depending on the report) competitive with coal & gas today, already cheaper than nuclear, and expected to drop fast in the next few years as various battery tech ramps up.
        llm_trw 2y ago
        I've worked as a quant in energy markets and made a very tidy $10,000,000 in one day betting against solar and wind. The people who make those predictions are never held to account and can't find their ass with a GPS. One only need to look at the fact that the best predictor for energy generation prices increasing is how much renewables have entered the grid. Anything over 5% and you start seeing the costs rise upwards.
        ZeroGravitas 2y ago
        https://www.imf.org/-/media/Files/Publications/WP/2022/English/wpiea2022220-print-pdf.ashx https://www.imf.org/-/media/Files/Publications/WP/2022/Engli... > We find that renewable energy is associated with a significant reduction in wholesale electricity prices in Europe, with an average impact of 0.6 percent for each 1 percentage points increase in renewable share. We also find evidence for a nonlinear effect—that is, higher the share of renewables, the greater its effect on electricity prices. On the other hand, while quantile estimation results are mixed with regards to the impact of renewables on the volatility of electricity prices, we obtain evidence that renewable energy has a negative effect on volatility at the highest quantiles. Having people betting on energy markets sounds like a bad thing. When the people betting (and apparently winning those bets) also have false beliefs about renewables raising wholesale energy prices that are contradicted by evidence? Well, at the very minimum, it's not a good look. At worst it's Enron. In Australia the introduction of grid batteries made its money back in slightly over a year not because of buying and selling electricity, but from undermining the price setting collusion of the gas operators.
        ben_w 2y ago
  - umeshunni 2y ago
    Or data centers around the world used for training
  - costco 2y ago
    But transmission losses would be large. There's 3-5% loss per 1000 km. Most countries don't have a power surplus to begin with so they are probably not going to start exporting what they do have to Americans.
- sangnoir 2y ago
  > Turning off the data center for 2/3rds of the year when the sun isn't shining sure is an idea. reply The logical thing is to place the solar panels where sun shines for more than 1/3 of the year. Additional considerations: DCs are never at 100% utilization,and the hyperscalers won't keep up with their current pace of investment in AI for the next 5-10 years - they will gladly push the power generation CapEx risk onto someone else (existing utilities), and let the taxpayers take the fall.
pfdietz 2y ago
Solar is better than nuclear for any application here. And remember, you can do your training in a location that has the world's best solar resource, not in (say) Finland.

OutOfHere 2y ago

Not true. You need a worldwide transmission network that supplies electricity to wherever it is needed. Solar power is available 24x7 on the planet. Long-distance DC transmission technologies have evolved.

chickenbig 2y ago
> You need a worldwide transmission network that supplies electricity to wherever it is needed. Now that's a whole bigger challenge than you started out with. The XLinks project [1] is a proposed 3.6GW 4,000 km undersea link from Morocco to the UK. The cost of the inter-connector alone is 11B GBP, so approximately 0.75M GBP per MW-km. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xlinks_Morocco–UK_Power_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xlinks_Morocco–UK_Power_Projec...
- OutOfHere 2y ago
  Going by your logic, once upon a time, I figure you would have said the same thing for the internet: "Why invest so much in a global communication network when regional servers can work cheaply, and still exchange data by snail mail?"
  - chickenbig 2y ago
    > Why invest so much in a global communication network when regional servers can work cheaply That's the system we have; CDNs, Google Global Cache [0], Netflix Open Connect [1] . Location matters, even for bits and bytes, because infrastructure is expensive. Perhaps you are missing how large and expensive the cables are. See [2] for 2014 cable spec and costings. ---- [0] https://support.google.com/interconnect/answer/9058809?hl=en https://support.google.com/interconnect/answer/9058809?hl=en [1] https://openconnect.netflix.com/en_gb/appliances/ https://openconnect.netflix.com/en_gb/appliances/ [2] https://www.nationalgrid.com/sites/default/files/documents/37783-ETYS%202014%20Appendix%20E%20-%20Technology.pdf https://www.nationalgrid.com/sites/default/files/documents/3...