Texas Needs Equivalent of 30 Reactors to Meet Data Center Power Demand
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They took a risk and got bit by, frankly, not understanding how the system works and basically ate the spikes.
It's the exact same idea as insurance. You don't buy insurance because you think you'll take the insurance company for a ride, you buy insurance to even out your costs. If someone hits you, you don't need to fork out tens of thousands of dollars for medical bills and repairs, but you will fork that out over time instead with more manageable payments.
If you don't want to see scary bills, then pay a little higher average prices so you end up with a consistent bill.
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Texas is big. You have tornados in the north, hurricanes in the south, and a lot of nothin' in the west. Some areas it makes sense to have a generator, but in many parts, it really doesn't.
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Washington State?
Washing State has a ton of hydro, because they get a ton of rain in the mountains, thus near-constant hydro power supply. That really won't work in Texas.
I live in Utah and we have pretty average prices (about $0.12-0.13/kWh), which is pretty decent considering we have a competitive amount of renewables and a similar lack of hydro options.
I grew up in WA and we had a lot of cool classes about the geography of the region, especially things like the Grand Coulee Dam. I even took my kids there to show how hydro works. We have dams here in UT, but they're mostly to preserve water for the summer when we get almost no precipitation.
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Exactly. I have family in CA, WA, and I live in Utah, which is quite the gamut when it comes to electrical generation. CA is by far the most expensive, followed by UT (we're pretty average), followed by WA (cheap due to tons of hydro). CA is expensive because their electricity policies are stupid IMO, UT is cheap because we're somewhat reasonable (too much fossil fuels, but competitive renewables), and WA is cheap because they have more water than they know what to do with (ironically though, their water prices are higher than ours).
I don't know much about Texas, but I imagine it's similar to how things are here in UT, it just scales better since they have ~10x the population.
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steam cools back to water
That one. The most common methods of condensing that steam rely on large bodies of water acting as heat sinks. Water in those large reservoirs is lost to evaporation, which is exacerbated by the additional heat.
The water in that reservoir must be reserved for the nuclear plant; a drought that drains the reservoir will knock the plant offline.
Air-cooled condensers are possible, but at significantly reduced efficiency, especially in already hot environments.
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Yeah, build that many minus 10-20%, and fill in the rest with solar, wind, etc. That way you get a good mix of base level production and burst demand.
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Well, Texas certainly has the space for it.
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Can solar and battery production keep up with expanding demand?
China is expanding so fast that they are accused of overproducing, and so supply capacity is not only there, it can increase further.
Usually the proper solution is a mix of technologies. It shouldn’t be solar vs nuclear vs wind, but a mixture.
The main benefit of wind is in battery reduction. A capacity equal to lowest night demand. Wind often produces longer hours than solar per day. The predictability of solar allows clear power forecasts, and then enough solar for needs with a small grid connection allowing both monetizing surpluses, and having resilience in shortfalls. Nuclear has no economic or climate roles, for being both too expensive and of too long a delay.
I also think hydrogen is an interesting option as well, since it’s sort of an alternative to batteries,
Hydrogen is the solution for having unlimited renewables and being able to monetize all of their surpluses. It is a bonus to be able to provide emergency/peak power, including renting a vehicle to have bonus value of powering a building. For today, backup fossil fuel generators can still provide resilience value to solar.
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Wanting to add that Washington, particularly Tacoma and other nearby counties are some of the only major cities whose power comes 100% from renewables.
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How do you condense the steam back to water?
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For today, backup fossil fuel generators can still provide resilience value to solar.
And that's the issue. Nuclear is an effective alternative to fossil fuels and can make sense in many areas. What you need is:
- lots of space for waste disposal
- prevent disruption from activist opponents (delays drive up costs)
- enough projects that you get economies of scale for construction (e.g. specialized crews can move from site to site)
- high enough base load demand to fully utilize nuclear
France has a ton of nuclear and it is on the cheaper end for electricity rates in Europe, and they're not particularly well-suited for it.
It's not a panacea, but it should absolutely be considered as a replacement for fossil fuels if energy demand is high enough.
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not even close lol, having systemic blackouts randomly is not an indication of a good grid.
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I think they mean "the same forces that led to the grid collapsing every few years -- prioritizing profit above all else, and the government giving zero fucks-- are the same forces which trigger new development to be in renewables with zero regulation or oversight"
Conservatives always write about their broken-clock-right-twice successes in a similar way.
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Using existing infrastructure for backup/resilience as renewables are ramped up is the ideal. Was German last government's approach. Cheaper (free) than even maintaining/refurbishing aging nuclear, allowing for private sector to expand renewables (also free). Standby payments to stay open and ready is cheap, and permits rapdid renewables to decrease their peaker use.
"Baseload" nuclear has the inverse problem of renewables. It needs to sell all of its very expensive power near 24/7. Costs being dominated by its initial building, means that half capacity is double the breakeven power revenue. Nuclear needs to suppress cheaper energy to be viable, and in the ultra optimistic (Vogtle took 20 years) 10 year buildout period, renewables must be suppressed so that when the ON switch is set, full power sales occur.
France has a ton of nuclear and it is on the cheaper end for electricity rates in Europe
France has understood that building new nuclear should wait until 2060s, when possible construction technology is advanced enough. The heyday of nuclear came when electricity demand was growing fast, and fears of available reserves and geopolitics affecting alternatives. Coal is also excessively polluting and dirty, in a locally displeasing way. The environment of alternatives is much different today.
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Compared to California, where everything is done to increase customer rates, or most other states where long wait lines to connect power occur, you can measure effective corruption by how much energy additions are made, including home solar. You can be critical of their exposure to power system failures, but that doesn't make the system corrupt.
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"In order to protect uptime of our glorious data centers, neighborhoods will begin experiencing rolling brownouts to reduce demand."
- Texas soon probably.
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Your measure of corruption is what now? How many new things are built regardless of their need or what impacts they may have?
Very...unique standpoint.
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“Baseload” nuclear has the inverse problem of renewables. It needs to sell all of its very expensive power near 24/7.
Excess nuclear production at night recharges batteries for daytime use, reducing the need for battery and solar rollout. Excess solar production during the day recharges batteries for nighttime use, reducing the need for baseload supply. Daytime use is higher than night time use, so this is pretty close to the ideal setup, no?
Use each non-polluting source for what it's best at. You don't need any one source to be the primary supplier of electricity, you want a diverse enough set that you get an optimal mix to keep costs and pollution low and reliability high. Mix in some wind and others for opportunistic, cheap generation.
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Just that the lack of cheap energy built/connected is a function of all of the obstacles put in the way of those projects. They get done in Texas more than other places that "put out a better virtue vibe", but behind the scenes put up obstacles.
