McKinsey upped their data center forecast: now expect "83GW is up from ~56GW in from the prior September 2023 modeling. Overall McKinsey now forecasts US data center energy consumption in terawatt hours (TWh) rising to 606TWh in 2030, representing 12% of total US power demand. Critically this is up from ~400TWh in the September 2023 modeling refresh. This is relative to 147TWh in 2023 and 4% of overall US power demand."

Companies in the past 20 yrs: your tech strategy allows you to thrive Companies for the next 20 yrs: your energy strategy allows you to thrive

demand-pull ftw? "Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro is urging the PJM Interconnection to quickly develop a fast-track process to review interconnection requests for shovel-ready generation such as Constellation Energy’s 835-MW unit 1 at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant." utilitydive.com/news/fast-tr…

i've been going on and on about this, but basically, AI flips electricity on its head. previously, nearly half the cost of electricity to the consumer was allocated towards distributing it where (and when) you want it. AI data centers want upwards of hundreds of megawatts of power in one place, most of the time. (and for training they don't care about latency) The most constrained thing isn't even the energy itself -- there's a surplus during the solar peak -- it's often the sheer availability & the interconnection. It now can take multiple years to get a grid interconnect to draw power of this magnitude, if the location can even handle it. The capital cost of the power infrastructure is just a tiny fraction (like 3%!) of the capex of the compute, and even just the depreciation of the compute exceeds the cost of even premium power. Hence, AI hyperscalers and those that aspire to be in their class are traveling to where the power is, are building where power has been (and there's legacy transmission to support it, like old nuclear plants) and are getting into the business of actually building powerplants and reactors. Utilities and transmission and distribution companies, interconnection queues, all are used to react much slower -- over many years -- unlike the top technology companies, now vying to compete at the highest levels of AI performance. Since ~99% of energy technologies previously died withering while waiting for utilities to consider them bankable, this represents an extremely fertile, attractive new state of play if you're bringing a new energy technology to market (💁🏻‍♀️🔆). Whereas before you'd have to brave what was once called a "green valley of death", now you have teracap companies like microsoft bidding on: - Conventional, large nuclear fission - Small modular nuclear reactors - Engineered Geothermal - Fusion! - Stirling Engines 😬 - Who knows what else - Maybe you, Anon! Even Tesla is standing up gas generator arrays to burn fossil fuels for their AI power supply. Shit is getting real

🇨🇿🇬🇧#CzechRepublic: Rolls Royce Chosen To Develop First #SMRs In Partnership With CEZ #UK company wins bid among seven candidates #NuclearEnergy #NuclearPower #CEZ #RollsRoyce nucnet.org/news/rolls-royce-…

Nice to see the FT take on the potential "emissions gaming" from Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) by big tech firms. "The basic fact is you can be solar powered all night long with today’s accounting, and that’s absurd." ft.com/content/2d6fc319-2165…

8. Hydrogen fuel cell car sales: down and out. Sales are falling for two years now. The market is now concentrated in South Korea due to very generous incentives. More Ferraris were sold than fuel cell cars last year. Let’s stop talking about this.

Government likes to wait until crisis to act. That risks being a disaster for the electric grid as it faces 4 simultaneous challenges: growing load, more intermittent resource, need to lower emissions, and pressure on rates. The grid is showing cracks on reliability and meeting demand today. The only way to solve the challenge is to build a lot of generation and transmission. But constraints on permitting and siting restrict that pace. It takes 2-4 years to add most generation and up to 8 years to build transmission. We need to change the trajectory of development starting now to avoid risk of the grid breaking later this decade. It's why federal permitting reform this year is so important. Bipartisan talks have resulted in the framework of a good bill. The challenge is whether Congress can legislate before a crisis emerges in an area that is increasingly political. It better.

Zuck talking about AI load, transmission, nukes, and permitting… x.com/ThomasHochman/status/1…

Some thoughts on power & and AI data centers: 1) Tech giants care about SPEED TO MARKET. ANY power > CLEAN power in that order. They also care about sustainability targets and will still pursue them but will not forego tech targets in name of sustainability targets.

Bitcoin mining has zero carbon emissions.