Schneider Electric says US grid will be less stable by 2030 as datacenter demand rises The US electricity grid is likely to be highly constrained and less stable by 2030, and datacenters aren't helping. Some regions are forecast to have a safety margin that leaves little reserve capacity to cover emergencies. electricity overhead Datacenters selling power back to the grid? Don't bet on it, say operators READ …
Texas Freeze could become the
Great American Blizzard Blackout Bonanza
And someone could talk about a big beautiful plan, the biggest most beautiful plan in history. A plan with lower taxes and reduce spending to Make America Powered Again.
Powered with a Great Golden Grid.
""But then they'll go elsewhere!"
You say that like it's a bad thing."
I have to agree. They don't add many jobs to an area, but they could impact electrical capacity in a way that limits other businesses that do employ people from setting up shop in the same area.
I would think that municipalities paying for any business to come to their area is a bad thing, but paying a data center operation is twice the negative.
When batteries are added they should be added on the substation level rather than huge battery farms near solar installations for example. We designed the grid the way we did because back in the day we had a small number of very large generating stations. Now we increasingly have a large number of very small generating stations (people's roofs) and a growing number of medium size generating "stations" (PV arrays and wind farms) so there is less need for power to travel long distances - but we can only take advantage of that if power reserves are closer to the smaller consumers.
"When batteries are added they should be added on the substation level"
I'd prefer to have the battery storage at my home sized to optimize my bills than to pay more on my bill to allow the utility to optimize their costs.
I haven't run the numbers, but at night when solar farms aren't generating, the lines run to service them aren't being used if storage is moved from that site and could be more expensive to do it that way. A sub-station charging up local storage is going to be doing so from solar only when those systems begin producing in the morning while there are other demands as people begin their day.
Don't these data centers run at full capacity 24x7 ?
Isn't this a more stable demand than millions of consumers all turning on their AC in summer and heating in winter, when they get home at the same time everyday?
There was a scare story last year of network time synced Nest thermostats crashing the grid when millions of homes all switch on at precisely 5:00:00.00000 pm
Yes they are certainly bad for distribution, especially if you designed your grid to run a few steel plants and haven't done any updates in the last 50 years
But as loads go they are pretty much perfectly stable
>. All to have AI generated porn and cat videos
Worse than powering a million tv's just so guys can watch hunky black men in tight trousers run into each other?
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