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Comment by rc5150

3 hours ago

"Yes, in an environment where power availability is ~fixed on short-to-medium time scales, adding a new large demand will increase prices."

You just nullified your own point.

8 comments

rc5150

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MostlyStable  3 hours ago

No, the point of my comment is that, while that is true, that's not the "cause".

  • giantg2  2 hours ago

    "No, the point of my comment is that, while that is true, that's not the "cause"."

    If we changed the policy overnight, we would still have the same problems because infrastructure takes years to plan, build, and make operational. So no, the cause is in fact the rapid increase in demand, not just policy.

  • J_McQuade  3 hours ago

    Now assume there were no such regulations and factor in the time it takes to actually plan, build, and commission a new power station and associated grid infrastructure. I'm not sure that your distinction matters in any real way.

    • MostlyStable  3 hours ago

      >time it takes to actually plan, build, and commission.

      This is, currently, mostly regulatory. Yes, in the absence of any regulations at all it would still take time to plan, build, and commission, and I am not advocating for literally no regulations, but solar and wind plants could probably be spun up in well under a year under a dramatically reduced regulatory burden, almost certainly faster than a new Datacenter can be built. They are, after all, dramatically simpler installations.

      And that's not even thinking about the fact that in this alternate reality we are imagining, power plants would have been being continually built for decades, and the new demand would be a much smaller drop in the much larger bucket.

      So I think that in an alternate regulatory regime both A) yes actually power plants could built ~ as fast as data centers and other large power consumers and B) we would have so much more power that increases in demand would be less of a shock to the system.

      2 replies →

    • watwut  2 hours ago

      Planned solar and wind projects were stopped by Trump administration, because green energy is not manly enough.

      Planning is not issue. Republican party intentionally preventimg those via goverment regulation is.