Comment by rgmerk
7 hours ago
To be fair, you end up needing insane amounts of batteries if you want to run 24/7/365 just on solar, particularly if you insist on building your data centres in places with dark winters.
7 hours ago
To be fair, you end up needing insane amounts of batteries if you want to run 24/7/365 just on solar, particularly if you insist on building your data centres in places with dark winters.
Wind is better than solar in many places and somewhat reduces the need for batteries
From ERCOT's stats- wind is complimentary. But, I can't find any hard data on intraday/hourly power usage for AI it seems reasonable to assume that night time use will be lower though.
And so it doesn't have to be looked up: Wind seems to peak at dawn/dusk when solar is not delivery much power, solar peaks in line with air-conditioning load, and there's a miniscule amount of grid scale battery to hold up the grid during a short gap between solar and wind. The batteries are recharged with solar. At least that was the pattern this summer- I need to check now that it's winter.
You can't run a turbine 24/7 either, they require maintenance windows.
Yes, you can run a turbine 24/7, just not 365 days a year.
For gas turbines, n+1 is probably good enough for up to n=10, then n+2 and so on.
If one breaks down or is undergoing maintenance you have a spare.
Solar can’t work like this. Even if you build 2n solar capacity, you still have a not insignificant fraction of each day with no power.
Meanwhile a gas turbine can be running continuously for week to months between service intervals.
Just add batteries? Ok, but that’s no longer solar, and comes with not insignificant additional costs and maintenance etc.