Comment by jeffbee
11 hours ago
America basically did not add any net generating capacity in the first two decades of this century, instead treading water with repowering and efficiency. This was a mistake and now that we could use the energy everyone is acting like it's impossible to expand the grid at the same rate we expanded it in the 1980s.
In many ways this mirrors the way America walked into the housing crisis with its eyes closed.
I don’t understand how it could have realistically been different. In say 2001 how can you possibly make the case for very expensive grid expansion for future loads that haven’t been invented yet?
Thats fine. If we did not need it, then we didn't need to build it out using what was at the time more expensive technology. But in 2026 we should not be pretending that the rate at which the grid expanded in the 1980s was caused by alien technology transfers. We can easily repeat or exceed that expansion. Even the most outrageous predictions for IT loads do not exceed what we did in the 1980s.
absolutely agree with that. However, its not so much the capability, its the cost. In 2026 big projects cost a lot more, whos gunna pay for it? In the 80s we all paid for it, but we roughly all benefited as we got more and more electric capacity and day-to-day use cases. Today, it looks like we are all gunna pay for it, but only the datacenter owners are going to benefit. That model is broken.
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