4 ms·
This could work out. We need, for example, ultra-high-voltage DC lines from the US wind belt to areas with real loads. The US wind belt is roughly from the Texa
by Animats 3mo ago
This could work out. We need, for example, ultra-high-voltage DC lines from the US wind belt to areas with real loads. The US wind belt is roughly from the Texas panhandle north to Canada. Plenty of wind, no big power users. But nobody has been able to build lines west to California or east to Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan, where the loads are. This is held up by land acquisition, not technology.
China has something of the same problem. The cheap power sources are in the northwest, and the big loads are in the southeast. So China has long million-volt UHV DC lines.
- 9dev 3mo agoAnd why not build data centers where the energy is?
- mschuster91 3mo agoLatency.
- rapidaneurism 3mo agoDoes it matter for training?
- bell-cot 3mo agoI'd assume that site selection managers understand how recommending "only useful for training" locations might impact their careers.
- api 3mo agoDoesn’t matter for training or most AI use cases. We are talking tens of ms latency here. I’m gonna guess availability of employees may matter more.
- inigyou 3mo agoOnce built, the DC has like, ten employees. Nine security guards and a part-time on-site technician.
- giantg2 3mo agoNot all loads require low latency to end users.
- _trampeltier 3mo agoLatency for interaction with AI? For something the user use browsers and electron apps. A ping goes around the whole world before your pressed key is visible on the screen.
- mschuster91 3mo ago> Latency for interaction with AI? It's not just AI. Video streaming or game streaming both depend on close proximity to the end user, alone because the data volume would completely overwhelm backhaul links... that's why Youtube, Netflix and a lot of CDNs all have colo facilities close to major population centers and their regionally dominant ISPs. It can be significantly cheaper to pay colo fees at an ISP' s data center than to pay interconnection fees for bulk transfers.
- 9dev 3mo ago> Video streaming or game streaming both depend on close proximity to the end user That's a straw man for this discussion. Yes, there will be a need to place some DCs close to users, but most of them could be located closer to energy production, attached to a backbone network, and the vast majority of customers would not suffer any degradation of service from it.
- high_na_euv 3mo agoDafuck? No way lol Playing from eu on us servers is not playable >A ping goes around the whole world before your pressed key is visible on the screen.
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- thinkindie 3mo agoI don't think that gaming is the focus of the DC discussed in this article. I don't think gaming will ever require a massive buildup as AI nowadays.
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- thelastgallon 3mo agoWhats the relevance of fibre optic latency to electric lines?
- bigfishrunning 3mo agoEither the data center is in the wind belt and you run fiber to the people, or the data center is near the people and you run power to the source. Either way you have to do some kind of cable run, and that means land.
- exe34 3mo agofiber is a lot easier to run under houses than hvdc.
- thelastgallon 3mo agoThere was a massive dark fiber buildout in 2000. The hyperscalers already have long haul fiber optic infrastructure everywhere in US.
- Aurornis 3mo agoParent comment didn’t say anything about data centers. Getting power from the areas with high renewable energy density over to the population centers is a good goal to have.
- 9dev 3mo agoSo, you move into a new flat. In the living room, there's five sockets on the west side, but only one on the east side, and that's planned for a lamp already. Does it make more sense to a) put up your TV and gaming console on the east side, and have an electrician run another power line across the room (they can install five plugs there too so you can keep the lamp and even charge your phone, which is nice), or b) simply put up your TV and console on the west side? I know parent didn't say anything about DCs, but this is a thread about power lines to data centres. Before you go out of your way to span expensive power lines all across the country to get the power where the consumers are, it's a lot smarter to move consumers where the power already is.
- wett 3mo agoI like your analogy so I will use it in my counter argument. I even have a personal example! In my last place, there were no ethernet ports, and there was no shot that my landlord would install any. Coaxial wasn’t correctly wired up either. So my two options were to either move my setup into the kitchen, or to run an Ethernet cord up into my room. I chose the second option to not monopolize the dining room table. It wasn’t pretty but my roommates were happier with some painters tape on the walls than my computer being in the kitchen. I think a similar thing can be said for people who live in remote areas, it is about compromise. In this example it’s low internet speeds, traveling to get groceries if you live in a food desert, or paying more for utilities. People prefer what they prefer. And if their preferences are worth their cost of the compromises, then they are going to go with their preferences. It’s unreasonable to expect someone to move / abandon their preferences because they may not make sense to others on paper.
- voidnap 3mo agoWhat an absolutely unnecessary analogy. The question is obviously more asking what is preferable about putting data centres in places where there is high competition with the population for power.
- AnthonyMouse 3mo agoDoes that actually make any sense when there is also plenty of wind across the ocean, which is >1000 miles closer to the coastal cities where people live?
- sigmoid10 3mo agoOffshore wind power costs ~3 times more per MWh than on land. You can still do it if you're really low on space, but if you have tons of empty space anyway, it may very well be cheaper to simply build longer power lines.
- Jordan-117 3mo agoPlus the current admin is extremely hostile towards wind power projects.
- AnthonyMouse 3mo agoThe current admin doesn't have a long enough shelf life to be making any long-term plans based on their proclivities.
- bryanlarsen 3mo agoThe main advantage of offshore power is the reliability of the wind. For example, on the North Sea the wind blows strong enough for power generation 80% of the time. The East coast of the US has similar trade winds.
- aqme28 3mo agoTends to have a lot of unfortunate pushback from the well-connected people who like to live on coastlines.
- AnthonyMouse 3mo agoA wind turbine which is ~30 miles from shore can't be seen from the coast because of the curvature of the earth. Do you actually think you'll get more opposition to a wind farm nobody can see from shore with a 30 mile undersea power cable that correspondingly doesn't require any use of eminent domain, than needing to seize a line of land 1500 miles long for a transmission line?
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- malfist 3mo agoWhy DC lines? AC is by far the better technology for distance transmission.