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First and foremost, China isn't energy-limited like the US is. A modern grid, lost of cheap power coming online every day. The worlds most advance ultra-high vo
by perbu 2mo ago
First and foremost, China isn't energy-limited like the US is. A modern grid, lost of cheap power coming online every day. The worlds most advance ultra-high voltage transport links are tying the deserts in the west to the cities in the south.
It probably sucks for you if the proposed powerline goes through your house, but the need of the many come first.
Having cheap and plentiful power is a huge market advantage. It was one of the factors driving Norway out of poverty 100 years ago.
- dalemhurley 2mo agoThere is economic benefits of the cost per a lumen continuously coming down.
- hobofan 2mo agoThe US also isn't energy-limited. They'll just price out all humans living there from buying any electricity. EDIT: This was obviously meant to be facetious with the intent to highlight the negative effects on the general population that datacenter buildout has in the US.
- Barbing 2mo agoUSA vs. China energy production graph is wild https://stanfordreview.org/content/images/2025/10/us_china_power-2048x1604-1.webp https://stanfordreview.org/content/images/2025/10/us_china_p... States have had trouble delivering expected EV charging capacity btw Why aren’t we considered energy limited?
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- yorwba 2mo agoThat graph features a completely-made-up superexponential AI growth curve coincidentally reaching 100% of US electricity generation in 2030, but even if you take the prediction up to 2026 at face value, it also agrees that AI is currently a small fraction of overall demand. Of course any individual data center site might struggle with insufficient local supply, but China would have the same problem if they wanted to build bigger data centers. (Production capacity is actually north of 25 000 TWh, but poorly utilized because of a mismatch in place and time between producers and consumers.)
- Mashimo 2mo ago> The US also isn't energy-limited. I have not looked into it, but I have heard a lot of new data center have to run on site gas turbine on trailers to have enough power. If the US is not energy limited, why they do that?
- Barbing 2mo agoSee your edit, got it :)
- wickedsight 2mo ago> but the need of the many come first. The need of the rich, you mean. In these kinds of situations it's never about the many, if it was about them different choices would be made.
- seanmcdirmid 2mo agoI think this is really a rosy image of China’s electrify situation. They have huge needs in the east and green energy in the west, they can’t build their UHV links fast enough. They are doing ok at keeping up, but there isn’t a surplus of cheap electricity lying around in the same places where you have cheap water as well.
- victorbjorklund 2mo agoWhat is stopping them from just building their data centers in the west where they have energy surplus? Not like you need to locate a data center inside a city.
- seanmcdirmid 2mo agoWater. The west is really dry. We could throw in data lines as well but it’s really bottlenecked by water. Actually the only place in China with water in abundance is southeast China. Also they really don’t have the chips to supply those data centers, and the government isn’t so crazy to go that aggressive on AI, they have lots of other priorities as well.
- vinaigrette 2mo agoI wonder if submerged system with coolant could mitigate this ?
- HarHarVeryFunny 2mo agoOne of China's big sources of power is hydroelectric such as the Three Gorges Dam, so if you want electricity and water in one place, then there it is.
- seanmcdirmid 2mo agoTry doing evaporative cooling in a swamp and tell me how that works.