4 ms·

Utah greenlights 9GW AI campus using over twice state electricity

garciasn 6mo ago
> MIDA executive director Paul Morris told county commissioners that the facility “will not take one electron” from the existing grid and could eventually feed surplus power back into it. And when they do and the residents' electricity costs go up because of it (which is baffling to me; the companies that use it should pay a premium for it that offsets the residential use), I guess there's just nothing that could be done. Not. One. Thing.
- sQL_inject 6mo ago
  Setting a reminder on my phone to come check back on this in five years.
- mistrial9 6mo ago
  in a California port city, there were newspaper headlines when a City Council swore to everyone that tearing down hundreds of good houses to put in a freeway to a far away transportation center "will benefit this great city" .. It is a historical laughing stock. Many neighborhoods are thick with foul diesel smoke for sixty years now, and the ordinary gardens and yards that were paved over, are long gone. The benefit was to the regional shippers, who grew truck traffic 4x then 40x.
panny 6mo ago
>powered by natural gas I love how AI made all the tech bros flip on 40 years of calling CO2 "pollution."
- Tostino 6mo ago
  Tech bro leadership never cared about the environment. You are thinking of two different groups of people.
  - shimman 6mo ago
    Tech workers aren't any better, they have no qualms with "just following orders" as long as they get their high salaries and stock grants.
    - collingreen 6mo ago
      Every person in an industry is uniformly the same!
  - panny 6mo ago
    Elon Musk built his whole identity around electric cars to save the world from fossil fuels, and now he's powering data centers with natural gas like everyone else. Lots of tech bros are like this out there. 10 years ago: We need to save the environment from CO2 global warming! now: Broooo, you need to use AI or you're getting left behind!
    - Tostino 6mo ago
      I'll admit, I was tricked by him too. Disillusionment started in 2016-2017 for me though. Just because a someone goes and lies to the public as easy as he breaths, doesn't mean he ever had any convictions.
- rafram 6mo ago
  Are you implying that people are wrong to call CO2 pollution?
explodes 6mo ago
Related 2d ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47910985 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47910985
justonceokay 6mo ago
I’m reminded (as I frequently am) of Vernor Vinge’s sci fi novels. In A Fire Upon the Deep, the main character comes to the realization that all civilizations collapse when the web of legal and supply chain dependencies collapses in on its own weight. As he is a sib-lightspeed traveler, he has to calculate the likelihood a civilization will still exist when he arrives. AI data centers are a new, expensive, and (soon to be) highly integrated layer on top of our economy’s tirimasu of dependencies. Especially as new generations come and rely more fully on the machines than we are comfortable doing ourselves. Right new if you destroy a data center you might destroy tax documents, calendars, sensitive user data, etc. 50 years from now destroying an AI center could mean no one can fly a plane or produce legal arguments anymore. So much of our productivity will be tied into these datacenters and our new skill sets will be entangled in their operation. Not good, not bad, just different.
hoofhearted 6mo ago
This deal is very strange and smells funky. Why would the state, the county, and the military even consider letting an inexperienced developer with zero past successful datacenter projects undertake such a vast project? I’ve been around the datacenter world for many cycles, and this story seems like a tale old as time. Again, why would someone with no experience take such an enormous risk? It may seem easy to build these things; but it’s actually quite difficult to get it all up and running safely and in sync at full capacity. Even experienced people in these fields mess up from time to time. For example, the largest electrical contractor in the dc area that was multigenerational family owned went under building the NSA data center in Utah, and they knew what they were doing! This was an expert electrical contractor with over 50 years of experience, and they got in way over their head with cost over runs and bad engineering. Somehow phases got crossed and things blew up if I remember correctly, and it lead to power surges that took them under. https://www.constructiondive.com/news/10th-largest-us-electrical-contractor-files-for-bankruptcy/290690/ https://www.constructiondive.com/news/10th-largest-us-electr... https://www.bizjournals.com/washington/breaking_ground/2014/08/more-details-emerge-on-trulands-troubled-utah-data.html https://www.bizjournals.com/washington/breaking_ground/2014/... How exactly is the shark tank guys property management company going to pull this off?
- kelseyfrog 6mo ago
  > why would someone with no experience take such an enormous risk? 6% of Americans think they could defeat a grizzly bear unarmed[1]. There is no upper bound to human confidence[hubris]. 1. https://yougov.com/en-us/articles/35852-lions-and-tigers-and-bears-what-animal-would-win-f https://yougov.com/en-us/articles/35852-lions-and-tigers-and...
- greenavocado 6mo ago
  > How exactly is the shark tank guys property management company going to pull this off? By hiring expert subcontractors to actually do the work
  - cyanydeez 6mo ago
    how does an idiot selwct experts, is a interesting paradox.
trehalose 6mo ago
> MIDA executive director Paul Morris told county commissioners that the facility “will not take one electron” from the existing grid Cool. Will it drive up the price of the existing grid's existing electrons though? It'll increase demand for the natural gas that keeps those electrons moving.
- mindslight 6mo ago
  > will not take one electron I'm torn between his intent of blatantly lying, and how technically correct that wording is.
  - deleted 6mo ago
    [deleted]
- subscribed 6mo ago
  No, it will just burn GWs worth of natural gas. Benn Jordan has captured quite an interesting evidence: https://youtu.be/_bP80DEAbuo https://youtu.be/_bP80DEAbuo
unrelat3d 6mo ago
Heh this post right now is HN 103 for me while this[1] is 102 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47939160 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47939160

> MIDA executive director Paul Morris told county commissioners that the facility “will not take one electron” from the existing grid and could eventually feed surplus power back into it. And when they do and the residents' electricity costs go up because of it (which is baffling to me; the companies that use it should pay a premium for it that offsets the residential use), I guess there's just nothing that could be done. Not. One. Thing.

sQL_inject 6mo ago
Setting a reminder on my phone to come check back on this in five years.
mistrial9 6mo ago
in a California port city, there were newspaper headlines when a City Council swore to everyone that tearing down hundreds of good houses to put in a freeway to a far away transportation center "will benefit this great city" .. It is a historical laughing stock. Many neighborhoods are thick with foul diesel smoke for sixty years now, and the ordinary gardens and yards that were paved over, are long gone. The benefit was to the regional shippers, who grew truck traffic 4x then 40x.

panny 6mo ago

>powered by natural gas I love how AI made all the tech bros flip on 40 years of calling CO2 "pollution."

Tostino 6mo ago
Tech bro leadership never cared about the environment. You are thinking of two different groups of people.
- shimman 6mo ago
  Tech workers aren't any better, they have no qualms with "just following orders" as long as they get their high salaries and stock grants.
  - collingreen 6mo ago
    Every person in an industry is uniformly the same!
- panny 6mo ago
  Elon Musk built his whole identity around electric cars to save the world from fossil fuels, and now he's powering data centers with natural gas like everyone else. Lots of tech bros are like this out there. 10 years ago: We need to save the environment from CO2 global warming! now: Broooo, you need to use AI or you're getting left behind!
  - Tostino 6mo ago
    I'll admit, I was tricked by him too. Disillusionment started in 2016-2017 for me though. Just because a someone goes and lies to the public as easy as he breaths, doesn't mean he ever had any convictions.
rafram 6mo ago
Are you implying that people are wrong to call CO2 pollution?

explodes 6mo ago

Related 2d ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47910985 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47910985

justonceokay 6mo ago

I’m reminded (as I frequently am) of Vernor Vinge’s sci fi novels. In A Fire Upon the Deep, the main character comes to the realization that all civilizations collapse when the web of legal and supply chain dependencies collapses in on its own weight. As he is a sib-lightspeed traveler, he has to calculate the likelihood a civilization will still exist when he arrives. AI data centers are a new, expensive, and (soon to be) highly integrated layer on top of our economy’s tirimasu of dependencies. Especially as new generations come and rely more fully on the machines than we are comfortable doing ourselves. Right new if you destroy a data center you might destroy tax documents, calendars, sensitive user data, etc. 50 years from now destroying an AI center could mean no one can fly a plane or produce legal arguments anymore. So much of our productivity will be tied into these datacenters and our new skill sets will be entangled in their operation. Not good, not bad, just different.

hoofhearted 6mo ago

This deal is very strange and smells funky. Why would the state, the county, and the military even consider letting an inexperienced developer with zero past successful datacenter projects undertake such a vast project? I’ve been around the datacenter world for many cycles, and this story seems like a tale old as time. Again, why would someone with no experience take such an enormous risk? It may seem easy to build these things; but it’s actually quite difficult to get it all up and running safely and in sync at full capacity. Even experienced people in these fields mess up from time to time. For example, the largest electrical contractor in the dc area that was multigenerational family owned went under building the NSA data center in Utah, and they knew what they were doing! This was an expert electrical contractor with over 50 years of experience, and they got in way over their head with cost over runs and bad engineering. Somehow phases got crossed and things blew up if I remember correctly, and it lead to power surges that took them under. https://www.constructiondive.com/news/10th-largest-us-electrical-contractor-files-for-bankruptcy/290690/ https://www.constructiondive.com/news/10th-largest-us-electr... https://www.bizjournals.com/washington/breaking_ground/2014/08/more-details-emerge-on-trulands-troubled-utah-data.html https://www.bizjournals.com/washington/breaking_ground/2014/... How exactly is the shark tank guys property management company going to pull this off?

kelseyfrog 6mo ago
> why would someone with no experience take such an enormous risk? 6% of Americans think they could defeat a grizzly bear unarmed[1]. There is no upper bound to human confidence[hubris]. 1. https://yougov.com/en-us/articles/35852-lions-and-tigers-and-bears-what-animal-would-win-f https://yougov.com/en-us/articles/35852-lions-and-tigers-and...
greenavocado 6mo ago
> How exactly is the shark tank guys property management company going to pull this off? By hiring expert subcontractors to actually do the work
- cyanydeez 6mo ago
  how does an idiot selwct experts, is a interesting paradox.

trehalose 6mo ago

> MIDA executive director Paul Morris told county commissioners that the facility “will not take one electron” from the existing grid Cool. Will it drive up the price of the existing grid's existing electrons though? It'll increase demand for the natural gas that keeps those electrons moving.

mindslight 6mo ago
> will not take one electron I'm torn between his intent of blatantly lying, and how technically correct that wording is.
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
subscribed 6mo ago
No, it will just burn GWs worth of natural gas. Benn Jordan has captured quite an interesting evidence: https://youtu.be/_bP80DEAbuo https://youtu.be/_bP80DEAbuo

unrelat3d 6mo ago

Heh this post right now is HN 103 for me while this[1] is 102 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47939160 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47939160