Comment by bigiain
5 years ago
> That quantity is about as much as an aluminum smelter switching on or off.
Interestingly, the mountains east of Portland OR, where all the Aluminum smelters used to be, are now full of FAANG datacenters relying on the power infrastructure (and pricing) the Aluminum industry used to use...
https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/2015/10/small-town...
And Washington state too:
https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/blog/techflash/2015/11/p...
That's pretty interesting, I'm sure those aluminium foundries would need to be careful about turning the power on as well.
Tangentially related, aluminium production in the Netherlands may shut down soon; because of a sudden spike in gas prices (due to mismanagement), electricity prices have also gone up, making producing aluminium no longer cost-effective. €2400 in electricity to produce a ton of aluminium worth €2500 kinda cost effectiveness.
I wouldn't be surprised if the big datacenters here will try and offload some of their workloads to datacenters elsewhere with lower energy costs. Mind you, I'm pretty sure these datacenters make long-running deals on electricity prices.