Comment by gorgoiler
3 months ago
It’s buried in the article but this about a debt vehicle created to finance a “2.064 GW hyperscale data center campus”. That’s approximately equivalent to a One-Third-Gorges Dam (one tenth of the Three Gorges Dam.)
Downstream of the capex to build the data centre is, presumably, a sister capex to build a power station. At what stage do these come hand in hand? Or does this financing include provisions to pay the electricity bills for the next ten years which, in turn, gets used by the power company to finance the construction of a new power plant? The power company gets some kind of heads up?
If I finance the construction of a mile long dinner table due for late November 2026, presumably some of that had to trickle down into a local turkey farm, lest everyone go hungry?
> Or does this financing include provisions to pay the electricity bills for the next ten years which, in turn, gets used by the power company to finance the construction of a new power plant? The power company gets some kind of heads up?
Mostly things like this, yeah. The hyperscalers don't want to get into the power business.
They also need artificial demand to keep the valuations of their data centers high, so generating multiple business interests creating wash trading benefits their interests.
Along with this, hedge funds got the heads up, and being smart/efficient money, went and bought up a load of power companies. This means higher profits as energy prices increase.
They would be surely rushing to invest in power infrastructure and use the AI scare (military need) to push through legislation. If they aren't doing this, they must be predicting the demand won't follow through...
Of course not. We're eating roast beast. (I'm saying that the entire endeavor is a fairy tale that we're misguidedly bringing into live-action.)
> One-Third-Gorges Dam (one tenth of the Three Gorges Dam.)
Pedantically, that's one ninth of the Three Gorges Dam. One tenth would be the 0.3 Gorges Dam.