As AI booms, land near nuclear power plants becomes hot real estate

The land surrounding a nuclear power plant might not sound like prime real estate, but as more bit barns seek to trim costs, it's poised to become a rather hot commodity. All datacenters are energy-hungry but with more watt-greedy AI workloads on the horizon, nuclear power has fresh appeal, especially for hyperscalers. Such a …

[cyberdemon]

Anticipating grid failure is more like it..

With a functioning grid, there is not much reason for electricity to be any cheaper near to a NPP, surely.

But if the companies are betting on grids failing in future, then nearby to an NPP might be a good spot for their datacentres.

[Jellied Eel]

Re: Anticipating grid failure is more like it..

With a functioning grid, there is not much reason for electricity to be any cheaper near to a NPP, surely.

I think in the US NPPs and other generators are allowed to sell direct to customers. In the UK, they can't and have to sell via a sleeve contract so it goes through the 'market', middlemen take their cut and taxes are correctly applied. Something that seems to get overlooked with 'ideas' like using wind to make H2 etc.

[John Robson]

Re: Anticipating grid failure is more like it..

"Something that seems to get overlooked with 'ideas' like using wind to make H2 etc."

Not overlooked at all.

There are plenty of issues with hydrogen as long term storage, but "currently you can't sell electricity direct" isn't one of them.

[Jellied Eel]

Re: Anticipating grid failure is more like it..

There are plenty of issues with hydrogen as long term storage, but "currently you can't sell electricity direct" isn't one of them.

Read the guide here-

https://assets.crowncommercial.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/Power-Purchase-Agreements-PPA-An-Introduction-to-PPAs.pdf

Unless you're close enough (ie collocated) to do a Direct Wire PPA, you're going to be reliant on a sleeving contract. Collocating and arranging a Direct Wire PPA is obviously more challenging with off-shore stuff. Or just intermittent generators like wind & solar in general. But if there's say, a 2GW NPP in the next field, it might make more sense because then the NPP can run at peak efficiency and offload to a Direct Wire client, if required.

[John Robson]

Re: Anticipating grid failure is more like it..

You know what's great about legislation - you can change it. The laws of physics, not so much, but contract limitations - absolutely.

Of course you can also do direct PPA, colocate the generation of electricity and hydrogen, or colocate them enough to have a dedicated cable.

[Nifty]

Re: Anticipating grid failure is more like it..

"You know what's great about legislation - you can change it"

In the UK? You're new around here, right?

[John Robson]

Re: Anticipating grid failure is more like it..

No - I'm old enough to remember a government that wasn't only concerned about internal squabbles, and actually had a legislative program.

Besides which you already don't need a sleeving contract, as mentioned.

[Lurko]

Re: Anticipating grid failure is more like it..

"Collocating and arranging a Direct Wire PPA is obviously more challenging with off-shore stuff."

Nigh on impossible. Ofgem's OFTO regulations intentionally make it impossible to use existing offshore transmission technologies for private wire types of arrangement. You could avoid the complex and craply thought out OFTO regulations for offshore power transmission by running below 132 kV. However, for larger offshore wind farms you're typically looking at 220-400kV, so would need much heavier cables for lower voltages along what will often be very long runs. The economics would never work out.

[John Robson]

Re: Anticipating grid failure is more like it..

So you build your offshore farm with an onshore module, which is the anti-curtailment module.

It is used to store energy that can't be sold, and then to sell it when it can be sold.

That could use batteries, or hydrogen, or some other form of energy storage.

[Alan Brown]

Re: Anticipating grid failure is more like it..

ALL intermittent supply generators should be required to fit buffering in front of the national grid feeds - AT THEIR OWN EXPENSE - right now this is another hidden subsidy

[John Robson]

Re: Anticipating grid failure is more like it..

Wow - so you envision all generators running at a constant output all the time.

Tell me you don't understand the electricity market without using those words...

[Jellied Eel]

Re: Anticipating grid failure is more like it..

Wow - so you envision all generators running at a constant output all the time.

Tell me you don't understand the electricity market without using those words...

Most fans of 'renewables' do that. Generators should run at peak efficiency and provide some inertia to keep the grid stable. 'Renewables' can't do this because they're entirely dependent on the weather, or time of day. So they create instability, and this is bad and an expensive problem to fix. Or in the current electricty 'market', fixing the problem 'renewables' created is just extremely profitable. So we've been connned into wasting money on 'grid scale batteries' that generate millions providing buffering, or synthetic inertia. Plus of course arbitrage, ie charging when electricity is cheap and flogging it when it's high.

If the 'renewables' industry was forced to pay the costs of instability and intermittency, nobody would buy it except for a few niche off-grid cases. Instead the costs are loaded onto our electricity bills, and the useless shower of shite in government seem to be hell bent on making this worse.. Hence inflation and de-industrialisation. Plus with 'AI' bollocks, it's probably even more fun give an AI bit-barn can probably be booked as a cost centre rather than making profits, so will waste electricity and won't generate taxes.

[John Robson]

Re: Anticipating grid failure is more like it..

You've never actually worked in the electricity supply industry then.

Very little inertia is actually required, and yes - buying electricity when there is a surplus and selling it back when there is a deficit is part of the picture now, it has been for many decades.

Renewables don't "create instability", they provide clean energy in a predictable fashion throughout the year. That prediction might only be out a few days for the highly accurate models, but it's enough to provide a very substantial portion of the energy we use. The larger, and more distributed, the renewable generation the better.

Inflation was not being caused by the wind becoming more expensive, that was actually gas - you know, that non intermittent, completely stable, resource you profess your love for. Of course it's only stable if you can get it, and it's availability is massively at the whims of foreign powers. It's also completely fucking the planet we live on, to the extent that we won't live on it for all that much longer if we carry on using it.

The world has changed since the start of the industrial revolution, do try to keep up.

[Jellied Eel]

Re: Anticipating grid failure is more like it..

Renewables don't "create instability", they provide clean energy in a predictable fashion throughout the year.

Good stuff. So tell me what min/max/avg wind generation will be on Friday?

This was Monday-

https://gridwatch.co.uk/Wind

minimum: 1.959 GW maximum: 7.79 GW average: 6.223 GW

The larger, and more distributed, the renewable generation the better.

No, it just makes the costs higher and the intermittency worse. Blocking highs tend to cover pretty much all the UK for days, often in Winter when energy demand for heating is high.

Inflation was not being caused by the wind becoming more expensive, that was actually gas - you know, that non intermittent, completely stable, resource you profess your love for.

Nope. Intermittent 'renewables' increased the dependency and demand for gas, so gas power could make up for all the times when the windmills weren't spinning. Then, in their infinite wisdom, our 'leaders' decided to sanction Russian gas. So the price of gas naturally rocketed. Then, thanks to the way electricity prices are pegged to the most expensive generator, wind farmers made massive windfalls. Ironically under CfDs prices above the strike price are split between wind farmer and government, but the costs are still forced onto consumers. And then of course there's indexation, so energy costs drive inflation, which means CfD strike prices increase even though the 'renewables' scumbags costs do not. Tobacco duty increases inflation, so windfarmers make more profits.

It's also completely fucking the planet we live on, to the extent that we won't live on it for all that much longer if we carry on using it.

The world has changed since the start of the industrial revolution, do try to keep up.

Yeh, it's regressing. The Age of Sail gave way to the Age of Steam. Windmills came back in fashion despite having exactly the same fundamental drawbacks as they did when we obsoleted them for the first time. The climate hasn't really changed since the Industrial Revolution, it's just neo-luddites have been made to be terrified of the weather. But an experiment for you. Increase the temperature on your thermostat by 1.5C and see how long it takes you to die.

But 'Global Warming' has been such a profitable scare story and scam. See for example-

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-68636451

Climate change threatens to "call time" on the great British pint.

But scientists are working with the brewing industry to help save it.

Hops give bitter its taste but the plant doesn't like the hotter, drier conditions we've experienced in recent decades and production has plummeted.

Ohnoes! Not the beer! Quick, superglue yourself to a road and save the pint! Hop growers could just irrigate, or maybe that can't afford to do that and pay for the energy needed to dry the hops. Or as the article says, people's tastes are changing and there isn't as much demand for Kent Goldings any more. Luckily hops grow in many parts of the world, and UK production is tiny compared to say, the US or Germany.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm right... the rest of the world is wrong...

Blah blah blah, renewables... intermittency... windmills... sanctions on Russian gas... CfD... inflation... climate hasn't changed... neo-luddites... bbc...

[Jellied Eel]

Re: I'm right... the rest of the world is wrong...

Blah blah blah

I'm glad you took time out of your valuable day to add such a constructive response!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I'm right... the rest of the world is wrong...

I'm saving's the other readers' some time.

It's also a template for your next post. Just change the ellipsis for some random words.

[John Robson]

Re: Anticipating grid failure is more like it..

So you don't understand the energy market, climate change, international trade, physics...

Anything I missed - I'm pretty sure you just got a bingo card of deliberate ignorance.

"Intermittent 'renewables' increased the dependency and demand for gas, so gas power could make up for all the times when the windmills weren't spinning"

So if it weren't for those renewables the gas turbines wouldn't be needed at all?

I really don't know why I bother... you're clearly not capable of critical thought.

[Jellied Eel]

Re: Anticipating grid failure is more like it..

So if it weren't for those renewables the gas turbines wouldn't be needed at all?

If we just used gas, we wouldn't need the windmills. Instead by forcing gas into stand-by generators, we increase those costs. Gas can load-follow and provide inertia, windmills can't. The 'renewable' solution is to waste billions on batteries instead.

I really don't know why I bother... you're clearly not capable of critical thought.

Again, classic projection. Why is it that the more we 'invest' in 'renewables', the more expensive our energy becomes? The scumbags promoting 'renewables' keep insisting theirs is the cheapest form of generation. Yet the more capacity we add, the more expensive our energy becomes. Oh, and did you look at the results from the last capacity auction? Oops, no wind because the subsidies weren't high enough..

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Anticipating grid failure is more like it..

> If we just used gas, we wouldn't need the windmills. Instead by forcing gas into stand-by generators, we increase those costs.

By the same logic we don't need outboard motors on dinghies because they all have rows as back up in case the motor fails. So let's just have rows.

> Why is it that the more we 'invest' in 'renewables', the more expensive our energy becomes?

You're again using prices to make a point about efficiency. I'm reminding you, again, that prices include taxes and levies, which are at government's discretion. Did we already established that you don't understand the difference between costs and prices? Costs are driven by efficiency. Prices are driven by offer, demand and taxes.

For instance, Germany and Denmark, two notable renewable champions, are among countries with the lowest costs of electricity, which allows them to be very competitive in day-ahead daily auctions. Everybody in the trade knows that. Conversely, Italy, mainly using coal, is consistently among the most expensive.

[Jellied Eel]

Re: Anticipating grid failure is more like it..

You're again using prices to make a point about efficiency. I'm reminding you, again, that prices include taxes and levies, which are at government's discretion. Did we already established that you don't understand the difference between costs and prices? Costs are driven by efficiency. Prices are driven by offer, demand and taxes.

'We' did no such thing. You established that you don't know the difference.

So suppose you're a windmill operator. You take your costs, add subsidies and margin and sell to a supplier for a price. That price then becomes the supplier's cost. They add their own subsidies and margins and sell to their customer at a price. The accumalated costs and margins then just become a cost to consumers, or become part of the price calcuations for producers. Then because of the way energy costs are rapidly increasing, prices increase to reflect those rising costs, and thus we get inflation. Then the circle of insanity means that energy costs are increased in line with inflation and inflation rises even faster. Oh, and don't forget tobacco. Big element of the basket of goods now, but not a cost to 'renewables' scumbags. But tobacco duty increases the cost of electricity. Economics is weird like that.

Some day, if you ever manage to run a business, even a simple whelk stall, you'll realise that costs and prices just sit on different sides of the balance sheet. You buy whelks at your cost, you sell whelks at your chosen price. It really isn't a difficult concept to understand.. And when you fail at that, then HMRC will be along to help!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Anticipating grid failure is more like it..

Preposterous year 3 level confusion. Why do I need to state the obvious? Costs, as a measure of efficiency, only applies on seller side.

> "You take your costs, add subsidies and margin and sell to a CUSTOMER for a price." Whether this customer is ALSO a supplier of ANOTHER PRODUCT in the supply chain is IRRELEVANT and only needed by your warped reasoning to make your disingenuous (yet wrong) point.

> "But tobacco duty increases the cost of electricity. Economics is weird like that."

Ha ha ha. When you think this couldn't get more laughable. Write a paper, submit to International Review of Economics and share the peer reviews with us.

You probably misunderstood the news that tobacco duties affect consumer price index (CPI) because of the way CPI is calculated. Another clue that you seem to conflate inflation and electricity price variations.

[Jellied Eel]

Re: Anticipating grid failure is more like it..

Preposterous year 3 level confusion. Why do I need to state the obvious?

I have no idea why you attempt to state the obvious, other than it amusing me when you get it so very, very wrong.

Costs, as a measure of efficiency, only applies on seller side.

Uh, no. But then seeing as you brought this up..

You're again using prices to make a point about efficiency.

Nope, not really. But now you've gone there, it's again something you clearly don't understand. Yet I'm meant to believe you're an 'expert' in climate 'science' because you believe the Bbc & Grauniad. So business 101, as opposed to the Room 101 at the Bbc. Which used to be labelled 'Library'.

So efficiency is usually a relationship between two or more variables. So picking a simple one, ROI which is basically the difference between cost and price. I realise even that is a difficuly concept for you to grasp. That affects everyone in the supply chain. If the energy supplier, ie 'renewables' has high costs and is inefficient, that's going to increase the sell price. That then obviously impacts on the cost of the buyer, hence why so many businesses are going bust due to high energy costs. The ones that are currently surviving are becoming more inefficient because of those energy costs, especially as they're also inflated by all the subsidies. People are being made redundant due to those high costs, prices are increasing driving inflation, and businesses can't afford to invest in stuff that does useful work because they're struggling to pay their energy bills.

But I doubt you'll understand this, because I doubt you've ever done any useful work in your life.

ps.. and you still don't understand the way indexing affects inflation, or why electricity prices increase by either CPI or RPI, when most of those costs aren't relevant to a 'renewables' operator..

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Anticipating grid failure is more like it..

> If the energy supplier, ie 'renewables' has high costs and is inefficient, that's going to increase the sell price.

Bollocks. Prices are determined by offer and demand. If supplier A is inefficient and supplier B is more efficient, supplier B will easily grow their market share at the expense of supplier A and eventually take supplier A out of the market. If both A and B are inefficient in exactly the same way, selling their product at exactly the same exaggerated price, and assuming demand is reasonably elastic (look up that concept), then less of their product will be purchased and therefore their high cost will have less impact, if any, on the supply chain.

And, again, energy prices and inflation are two different things. If the central bank of a given country reduces that country's currency monetary aggregates below the existing amount of purchasable goods and services, then inflation will decrease. Irrespective of specific commodity trading rates. Simply by reducing consumers spending power. This is why central banks "sterilize" past quantitative easing cash injection and this is why they raise their various interest rates. This is what just happened in OECD countries in 2023 after the COVID activity and consumption rebound. This is how we got rid of inflation in most countries. And this is why interest rates can now come down.

Maybe your could study economics in the books rather than making up your own 2¢ economics theories waiting at the gas pump or fuming at the sight of wind turbines.

[Jellied Eel]

Re: Anticipating grid failure is more like it..

Bollocks. Prices are determined by offer and demand. If supplier A is inefficient and supplier B is more efficient, supplier B will easily grow their market share at the expense of supplier A and eventually take supplier A out of the market.

Again you demonstrate your ignorance of well, everything. But it's been very easy to troll you because it's always been easy to keep throwing you shovels so you can keep digging..

So what happens in a market that is rigged to favour supplier A? Let's assign 'renewables' to that variable. The inefficient supplier A grows market share thanks to regulatory capture, which also forces suppliers, B, C, D out out of the market because it's rigged against them.

And, again, energy prices and inflation are two different things

Yes, again you state the obvious, but miss the connection. Energy prices are in input cost to pretty much everything. Energy costs rise, so do prices, so do wage, pension and social costs etc etc. Then because of the indexation feedback loop, energy costs/prices inflate again and the cycle repeats. Interest rates also play a part, ie despite claims of falling costs from the 'renewables' scumbags, they're also saying they have to keep inflating prices because it's harder to get free money.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Anticipating grid failure is more like it..

OK genius. So why is inflation now down and renewable energy deployments still on the rise? See? Your 2c theory is total BS!

Also, "indexation feedback loop" is a myth. Otherwise inflation would be like entropy: always increasing. Instead, when inflation is high at some point this translates into high unemployment and then there is no reason for salaries to follow inflation. Especially if central banks cooled the economy via interest rates increases and other measures. But, sure, I'm the ignorant one.

Of every matter Jelled Eel is well aware,

As his main inspiration is Dunning Kruger.

Of his steadfast conviction, the inexhaustible fuel

Is actually a total lack of sense of ridicule.

[Jellied Eel]

Re: Anticipating grid failure is more like it..

OK genius. So why is inflation now down and renewable energy deployments still on the rise?

Are you sure about that? Have you looked at the results of the last capacity auction? Look ma, no wind..

Also, "indexation feedback loop" is a myth. Otherwise inflation would be like entropy: always increasing.

Yep, at last you're beginning to understand. Energy is a key element of inflation. Energy costs increase, inflation increases, then that increases energy costs again. It's the gift that keeps on giving. Yet 'renewables' were supposed to reduce our energy costs, and yet they haven't. Why is this, I wonder?

[John Robson]

Re: Anticipating grid failure is more like it..

"Yet 'renewables' were supposed to reduce our energy costs, and yet they haven't. Why is this, I wonder?"

They have - you can tell because the price is pretty much inversely correlated with the proportion of renewables on the grid - more renewables = lower price.

What do you think the operational cost is for a solar farm or a wind turbine? What's the delivery cost for wind/light, I bet even Amazon can't beat that price.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Anticipating grid failure is more like it..

> Yep, at last you're beginning to understand [LOL²]. Energy is a key element of inflation. Energy costs increase, inflation increases,

For Christ's sake please look up the "difference between inflation and price rise"

The difference between inflation and price rise is that inflation is the decrease in the value of money, while price rises are the increases in the prices of a commodity.

Maybe then we can start to have an adult conversation. What an unruly kid you must have been.

[Jellied Eel]

Re: Anticipating grid failure is more like it..

Maybe then we can start to have an adult conversation.

That would be nice, but would require 2 adults. Not 1 adult and one obvious troll. But here's a clue for you-

https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices

Inflation and price indices

The rate of inflation is the change in prices for goods and services over time. Measures of inflation and prices include consumer price inflation, producer price inflation and the House Price Index.

It's strange that I agree with the ONS definition of inflation, and the relationship to prices.. But you for some reason, do not. Hence why it's increasingly obvious that you're just trolling, and with the addition of your constant insults, in obvious breach of this forum's rules.

[John Robson]

Re: Anticipating grid failure is more like it..

"If we just used gas, we wouldn't need the windmills. Instead by forcing gas into stand-by generators, we increase those costs. Gas can load-follow and provide inertia, windmills can't. The 'renewable' solution is to waste billions on batteries instead."

So let me get this straight, you think that *more than* doubling the amount of gas we burn is a good solution, and we wouldn't have any supply issues based on foreign powers. Are you completely out of your mind?

You're also obsessed with inertia, which isn't needed much, and we have plenty from nuclear plants, and with load following which isn't needed if your load can demand follow - and that's what the grid is moving towards, a combination of flexible load and flexible demand - meaning that there is more than one lever to pull.

Latest capacity auctions "no wind because the subsidies weren't high enough" Oh, is that why they ended with the highest ever price in history for that auction - because there wasn't any wind?

I've not analysed those auctions at all, but the headline price and your claim of the "no wind" completely contradict your "wind expensive" fallacy.

[Lurko]

Re: Anticipating grid failure is more like it..

In the UK it's entirely permissible to have "private wire" arrangements for example if you have a factory near a power plant, you can contract with the generator directly and take the power over dedicated power lines you own. That does avoid grid and distribution costs, and most "policy costs" that government require for grid electricity to support their net zero follies.

Curiously, the way the law is written, even under private wire agreements, it is a requirement that you provide wholesale access to your privately owned cables; In practice you'd build the capacity you plan to use between point A and point B, so there wouldn't be any spare capacity to sell.

[Jellied Eel]

Re: Anticipating grid failure is more like it..

In the UK it's entirely permissible to have "private wire" arrangements for example if you have a factory near a power plant, you can contract with the generator directly and take the power over dedicated power lines you own. That does avoid grid and distribution costs, and most "policy costs" that government require for grid electricity to support their net zero follies.

Yep, which is where the politics and marketing get very bizarre, bordering on fraudulent. So claims of '100% renewable' based on buying REGOs. It also makes for strange economics, ie 'renewables' very much depend on subsidies, and those subsidies can't be claimed for energy sold via private wire PPAs. Also if constraint payments can or should be paid, if energy is still being sold via private PPAs. I also think it's why 'green' H2 can never really work given it would be pretty much dependent on private wire contracts, which then limit the scale and amount of 'green' H2. Plus the costs to transport that to market. I think the 'renewables' lobby is trying to game the virtual PPAs. But they cannae defy the laws of physics, so if there's surplus renewable energy being produced, it can't be shipped via a full grid.

[Alan Brown]

Re: Anticipating grid failure is more like it..

If/when Molten Salt Liquid Fuelled Nuclear proves scalability (SINAP TMSR-LF1), then you won't need electricity to produce H2 - these run at 800C or thereabouts which is hot enough to directly crack water

H2 will still be stupidly expensive compared to electricity due to the overall inefficiencies in the cycle, meaning reticulated H2 gas systems is a non-starter (nobody will buy it - piped H2 proponents are trying to sell a "new, improved buggy whip" in an age of automobiles)

For transport use, if you have the amount of energy available to produce industrial scale hydrogen then you're better off spending more energy to tack on atmospheric carbon atoms to produce hydrocarbons and transport/distribute those instead, at 1% or so of the cost of trying to keep hydrogen cold/compressed/contained. This will still be expensive fuel but there's no viable substitute for longhaul aviation in the immediate future (batteries don't have the energy density and mach 5 vactrains don't exist - yet)

For ground transport, batteries win out over H2 on the cost front too (as well as the fully fuelled range, H2 cars don't perform well in this regard, essentially being "BEVs, with added complexity/disadvantages")

The market for H2/hydrocarbon fuelled vehicles will be very small when diesel/petrol is over US$10/US gal in the USA and likely far higher elsewhere (It's already peaked past $9/gal in Britain twice in the last decade)

Molten fuel nuclear reactors have a bunch of other advantages, mostly due to not being giant steam bombs - including being able to fully load follow and should be around 80% cheaper to build/run than existing nuclear plants with greater safety margins and 99% less waste - at which point they'll probably make renewables obsolete by undercutting them

Interestingly, it SHOULD be possible to use a Molten Salt nuclear reactor as a substitute for the burners in a coal-fired plant as the entire reactor/containment building would be about 1/4 the size of those burners. It appears that China may have been planning for this option when looking at the layouts of coal-fired power stations built there over the last 20 years as there are patches of open ground beside the turbine halls not usually seen around traditional stations

We really have to bite the bullet on nuclear power. Whilst it's theoretically possible that renewables might match existing electrical generation, that's only 1/3 of our carbon emissions and decarbonising the rest is likely to require 6-8 times more electrical generation capacity than currently exists

[werdsmith]

Re: Anticipating grid failure is more like it..

Marchwood Power Station by Southampton is supplied by oil and gas by pipeline from nearby Fawley Refinery and in turn supplies power directly back to Fawley for refining activities.

The same arrangement stood with the Fawley Power Station that closed in 2013.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Anticipating grid failure is more like it..

The power generator and grid operator are two different entities in this part of Pennsylvania (Talen Energy and PPL, respectively, in this case). The power is cheaper in this case because the data center is connected with direct feeds to the plant, so no transmission/delivery charges from the grid operator.

[HPCJohn]

Re: Anticipating grid failure is more like it..

Locating close to a power stations avoids transmission losses.

Can anyone comment authoritatively on the magnitude of transmission losses?

[MyffyW]

Re: Anticipating grid failure is more like it..

On the magnitude - yes: They aren't worth worrying about when traversing Connecticut, they become appreciable when traversing a country the size of the Democratic Republic of Congo, to the extent that electricity is sent as DC to avoid inductive losses.

[jake]

Re: Anticipating grid failure is more like it..

"Can anyone comment authoritatively on the magnitude of transmission losses?"

This might help answer your question:

http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2010/ph240/harting1/

tl;dr version: In California, in 2008, transmission losses were about 6.8%, or 19.7 x 10^9kWh, at a cost of $2.4B worth of electricity in 2008 dollars.

[Alan Brown]

Re: Anticipating grid failure is more like it..

There's an economic limit on electrical transmission of about 1500 miles(*) if you're using million volt(**) HVDC interconnectors, substantially less for AC lines

The bigger problem for private wire feeds is obtaining rights of way for the pylons. That's why siting close to source is desireable (land is usually dirt cheap around power stations anyway)

(*) Which puts a spanner in the works of most "scale up renewables by paving the deserts in PV panels" advocacy

(**) This is about the limit. Higher voltages tend to arc over to ground too easily even if the towers are made taller

[doublelayer]

Re: Anticipating grid failure is more like it..

I haven't worked in the electric power industry, but I would guess that they get two advantages by being close. First, they get to avoid paying transmission costs, including any cost for adding more grid capacity for their large set of usage. If the existing grid couldn't handle their relatively large load being added, they'd probably have to pay most or all of the costs to upgrade it. Second, if there is a grid problem, their datacenter would continue operating. That failure doesn't have to be long-lasting. If they've sold their capacity on an SLA that becomes costly if the systems lose power, then they might want to avoid what, to a residential user, might be an annoying but acceptable outage. By locating close to a plant, they can probably get away with a lot less generator capacity than a normal grid-fed DC.

[may_i]

Great choice of location

The bit flips come for free!

[Anonymous Coward]

Beats bitcoin mining, anyway.

[Hurn]

Interchangable Companies?

What is the relationship between NE Edge and NE Energy?

Edge is designated as a startup, presumably, they want to build the data center, and need our (or at least, VC) money to do so.

Does NE Energy own the power plant, or are they some transmission line and substation owning middle-man, hoping for a slice?

Inquiring minds want to know, but tight fisted bastards notice, clicking on the link which might provide an answer to these questions, invokes a paywall.

Don't want to know, that much.

BTW - does NE stand for North East? New England? Nada Enchiladas? Maybe a reference to the Knights who say NE?

- Would they be interested in a shrubbery? Perhaps with another shrubbery next to it, and a little path...?

[Sceptic Tank]

Re: Interchangable Companies?

Nuclear Exident?

[Alan Brown]

Added advantages

There's a LOT of waste heat going begging near power plants. It's an ideal location for greenhouses/vertical farms (depending on available land area), etc

The waste heat is "free", so can also be used to drive "inefficient" ammonia bubble pump chilling/freezing plants too - which would be an added attraction for bitbarns/hyperscalers

[FuzzyTheBear]

Idiocy at it's best.

Already the grids can't cope with the power needed to keep the people cool , it cannot cope either with the electrification of vehicles requiring close to 2000 new nuclear plants by itself and AI wants to cut further the resources available to keep the people cool and the vehicles rolling ? .. just wow.

[Alan Brown]

Re: Idiocy at it's best.

See my comments about molten salt nuclear power

The MSRE was Alvin Weinberg's "industrial prototype" model, after the "Laboratory demonstrator" which was the Nautilus and Shippingport - nuclear power's high costs and stupidly long build times are a direct result of industry taking the demonstrator and scaling it up massively, with encouragement from the US Military because it got rid of a pesky problem (enriched uranium(*))

The project was killed by Nixon because it would have divorced civil power from the dependency on military waste products and the Pentagon brass really hated that idea

MSR designs at GW or larger scale(**) don't need stupidly expensive pressure vessels and even more stupidly expensive pressure containment buildings surrounding them, which means they can be built quickly whilst providing even greater safety than existing nuclear power designs

That means that dozens of them can be built relatively easily. It would probably take longer to build the non-nuclear side, but existing coal plants could be adapted to get their steam from MSRs (Conventional nuclear reactors can only produce wet steam, which is corrosive on turbines)

The other advantage of MSR designs is that the core parts can be mass produced relatively easily and shipped where needed (a prebuilt reactor core is truckable at 3-5GW)

(*) Weinberg used lightly enriched uranium on the Nautilus because it was avalable and thorium wasn't. The military had hundreds of tons of the stuff they wanted to get rid of and were happy to give it away - they wanted depleted uranium because this is the feedstock for making bomb plutonium. This is why USA stockpiles of depleted uranium are kept under armed guard on military facilities

(**) If proven scalable - but there's no reason to think they won't scale easily. Weinberg was _very_ thorough in his work on this. China's SINAP TMSR series work at Wu Wei is directly chasing that question as well as the viability of thorium fuelling in ways that address any potential proliferation issues (ie: in-loop conversion - TMSR-LF1 was fired up last year with a small U235 kickstarter load and 50kg of thorium. It's two years late but that's ONLY because the Chinese regulators insisted that isotopically pure lithium be used to avoid producing tritium)

[Morten Bjoernsvik]

tax it

The recent https://www.cerebras.net/product-system/ clocks in at 15U @23KW. They claim 2xPerformance for the same Watts, so maybe we should just wait.

Sould be a extra taxation on top of nice to have features, or only allowed to use surplus energy, or when price/KW is below a certain pricepoint.

[Jellied Eel]

Already the grids can't cope with the power needed to keep the people cool , it cannot cope either with the electrification of vehicles requiring close to 2000 new nuclear plants by itself and AI wants to cut further the resources available to keep the people cool and the vehicles rolling ? .. just wow.

Yep. It's insanity. So here's a thing-

https://obr.uk/efo/economic-and-fiscal-outlook-march-2024/

Which reviews UK finances. Environmental levies increase from £9.9bn to £11.5bn for 2024-25, or around £400 per household. Obviously this drives energy poverty, inflation and the 'renewables' scumbags profits. All the other Net Zero stuff just makes the problem worse, so massively increases electricity demand and supply being generated from the most expensive and least efficient technology.

Then contracts like these make the problem worse, ie allowing big electricity users to create PPA deals takes supply out of the market. So a 1GW generator that does a deal to sell say 40-50% to a datacentre operator means the operator gets power, the rest of the UK doesn't and prices go up yet again. Most of the current deals are pretty much greenwashing though, so allows companies like Amazon, Microsoft etc to claim they're powered by 'renewables' and meet their 'Green' ESG obligations. Ireland's been experiencing this problem with a lot of their energy going to bit-barns rather than other consumers.

[Alan Brown]

wrt the renewables comment:

The _vast_ majority of renewables operations are farming subsidies, not electricity

[Anonymous Coward]

Hydro

Living in the Pacific Northwest with the mighty Columbia river, I am astonished it is not classified as "green energy". It is renewable, and unlike wind or solar it is also storable. Nope, they want to remove the dams from the rivers. They foolishly forget the dams also provide flood control for the areas their cities are now built upon. Crazy.

[YetAnotherXyzzy]

Re: Hydro

Yes, it is crazy. Back when I was a young environmental activist, hydro was one of the darlings of the movement, and rightly so. Today's environmentalists trash talk hydro, leading to cases of the perfect being the enemy of the good. The developing country where I live has enough hydropower potential to cleanly provide the nation's electricity instead of what we have now, which are thermal plants burning bunker oil. For some reason our environmentalists think that would be a bad thing.

[Roland6]

“ land near nuclear power plants becomes hot real estate”

Bit barns need (a few) workers and some customers demand low latency communications (eg. Stock brokers), so additional development will be required.

So the current practise of locating nuclear power stations in remote places is probably not sustainable, perhaps the time is to turn this on its head…

Given the UK is embarking on a programme of building new nuclear and the problems of getting grid connects into west London for all the bit barns people are wanting to build there. building a new nuclear power station amongst the west London bit barns is looking like a good idea…