Comment by Karrot_Kream
2 months ago
The argument is that it's too hard to gain the necessary approvals on Earth such that space is faster and easier. Not sure I buy it fully (I do see it somewhat), but that's the argument.
2 months ago
The argument is that it's too hard to gain the necessary approvals on Earth such that space is faster and easier. Not sure I buy it fully (I do see it somewhat), but that's the argument.
The permitting slowdown is if it want to connect to the grid. If you want to run solar behind the meter, you can go nuts.
Sure but acquiring enough land to build solar profitably near a DC that can hook up to the big US interconnects is very expensive and will often be blocked by residents. If you want to build solar where there are few people and cheap input costs, then you need to transmit the power to the DC.
I keep hearing about brand new data centers they want to create. Seems reasonable to go to sunny, enormous, business friendly Texas and surround the data center site with acres of solar panels, batteries, emergency gas, and whatever sized grid connection you can get approved immediately.
If the DC is for training or text inference, latency seems irrelevant, so go where you can quickly plop down power.
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