Comment by rgmerk
9 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.
9 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.
> 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.
Not "insane", just "lots". Everything in a nation of mere single-digit millions is "lots", let alone the whole world. The quantity isn't far off what's needed anyway to electrify road transport.
But also, the other option besides batteries, for people who want specifically PV to supply power at night to specifically high latitude locations with long winter nights, is to have a long power line going to somewhere less silly to put the PV:
Many such power lines already exist, upgrading them was already necessary even without any questions about the sources putting tension on the lines because they're just so old now, the only question is the *delta* in cost between what would have been needed with no changes in supply and demand vs. what is needed given those have both changed.
And before anyone says "what about grid losses?", right now, China (and only China, and yes I have checked) makes enough aluminium they could put a girdle around the earth with 1 Ω resistance the long way around using a bit less than 5% of their recent production in about 20 years.
The rest of us would need to massively increase our aluminium production to get close to that; it's not immediately obvious why we couldn't given they did.
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.