Texas Needs Equivalent of 30 Reactors to Meet Data Center Power Demand
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Uber-like surge pricing on electricity
We don't really: that story you heard from a few years ago was the only company that billed like that. The customers made a bet that the pricing averages through the day (lower at night, higher cost during the day) would average out in their favor over fixed-cost billing, and frankly, it did right up until it didn't.
They took a risk and got bit by, frankly, not understanding how the system works and basically ate the spikes.
Everyone else paid $0.09/kwh or so during that whole period, and the electric providers ate the cost because when you're averaging out spikes across millions of kwh, it won't lead to bankruptcy.
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Data centers need to bring their own power.
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Texas pays 11 dollars per kilowatt hour. Far lower than left wing states and has a manufacturering base.
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Every Texan I know has a generator to deal with the unreliability of the grid, and there's never been an article about someone in Iowa getting a surprise $100k electric bill...and the average wage in Texas is substantially lower than in "left wing" states like California or Washington...so not sure you're making an apples-to-apples comparison, but time will be the judge, we can all check-in in a year and see how this plays out. Does Lemmy have a remind me! bot?
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California pays 19 dollars per kilowatt hour. Texas grid is better.
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Please! It would be such a nice improvement!
I want to get out of here
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In a well regulated way that includes oversight, yes.
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For the same reason housing should be a speculative investment, and healthcare services available only to the highest bidder.
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No dummy, you're missing a decimal point. California only pays 19 CENTS per kwh.
And if conservative Texas is so great how come they pay 20% more per kwh for electricity than deep blue Washington State?
Everything's bigger in Texas, especially the idiots & excuses.
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Texan here. I don't have a generator. Blackouts basically haven't been a thing in my area since like 15 years ago, so it really depends on location. Also my electric bill works the same way as it would in any other state; the problem is when people buy electricity at what you might call "market price"; most of the time it's cheaper, but you get fucked over sooner or later. It's kind of like that story about people's AC being controlled by the power company. They signed up for a program that explicitly set your AC higher during high-demand periods and then surprise Pikachu faced when the company did what they said they would do.
That said, our grid is still definitely trash (as are many other things here) and I'm desperately trying to move. Basically the only thing we've got going for us is the food is amazing.
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Washington has hydroelectric sources. 67 percent. Wind and solar are a tiny portion of its energy mix. Even nuclear powet exceeds wind and solar. Nice try.
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What? I've grown up around people in the nuclear industry, and nothing I've ever learned about the function "wastes" water.
::: spoiler Some rambling on how I understand water to be used by reactors
You've got some amount of water in the "dirty loop" exposed to the fissile material, and in the spent fuel storage tanks. Contaminated water is stuck for that use, but that isn't "spending" the water. The water stays contained in those systems. They don't magically delete water volume and need to be refilled.Outside of that you have your clean loop, which is bog standard "use heat to make steam, steam move turbine, moving turbine make electiricity, steam cools back to water". Again, there's no part of that which somehow makes the water not exist, or not be usable for other purposes.
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Not saying you're wrong. Renewables are absolutely preferable, and Texas is prime real estate to maximize their effectiveness. I'm just hung up on the "waste water building reactors" part.
Guessing it was some sort of research about the building process maybe, that I've just missed?
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Building them doesn’t waste water, running them does. In a place with a lot of water they make sense but any industrial water usage in a place with limited water supplies - when there are lower usage alternatives - seems wasteful
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How many do they need in the winter, tho?
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Every Texan I know
So none?
I lived in TX while I was stationed there for like 3 years. Exactly 0 people I've met there had a generator.
and the average wage in Texas
The cost of living is also significantly less.
California or Washington
Where it's double my mortgage payment to have a 2 be apartment?
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They literally outlined the whole process... What stage in
Outside of that you have your clean loop, which is bog standard “use heat to make steam, steam move turbine, moving turbine make electiricity, steam cools back to water”. Again, there’s no part of that which somehow makes the water not exist, or not be usable for other purposes.
Wastes water?
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The Texas grid is just better.
As a Texan who has lost power, for weeks at a time, 4 times in the last 10 years, I disagree. I live near a major city and we lose power almost every time there's strong wind, rain, or sub-freezing temps. Maybe you're just lucky to live where you live? I've lived all over my city, and it's surrounding suburbs, and it's been pretty much the same everywhere.
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But what about all that unholy black ooze?
Demon blood made of 666 particles
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I lived in TX while I was stationed there for like 3 years. Exactly 0 people I’ve met there had a generator.
I think that it's a good idea to have a generator in places that get serious storms, and coastal Texas can get hurricanes. I don't think that this is something specific to Texas' power generation, which is what I think the parent commenter is complaining about. Florida, which really gets whacked with hurricanes, is somewhere I'd really want to have a generator.
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They signed up for a program that explicitly set your AC higher during high-demand periods and then surprise Pikachu faced when the company did what they said they would do.
If the price swing between peak and off-peak is dramatic enough, I guess one could probably cool water during off-peak hours and then use a heat exchanger or something to use it to sink heat during peak hours.
https://home.howstuffworks.com/ac4.htm
Chilled water systems - In a chilled-water system, the entire air conditioner is installed on the roof or behind the building. It cools water to between 40 and 45 degrees Fahrenheit (4.4 and 7.2 degrees Celsius). The chilled water is then piped throughout the building and connected to air handlers. This can be a versatile system where the water pipes work like the evaporator coils in a standard air conditioner. If it's well-insulated, there's no practical distance limitation to the length of a chilled-water pipe.
That's not intended to store energy, just transport it, but I'd imagine that all one would really need is that plus a sufficiently-large, insulated tank of water.
