Don’t believe what you read on the internet especially if you want to believe it.

Have the data center build its own power plant.

100% and self contained. Must meet all local noise ordinances too.

I agree that the data centers should have to provide their own power, not be subsidized by the general population.

A current plan is to have high-voltage power lines start in the middle of Minnesota, cross into Wisconsin, cross one county and part of another, and terminate in... Bell Center. The Village of Bell Center has a population of about 100, if you include the dogs and cats. I'm pretty sure the retirees living there don't need all that power for their waffle irons.

Those power lines are going to cost serious money, and someone's going to be on the hook for it. They'll degrade nearby home values, harm the bucolic beauty of the area, aggravate the snot out of everyone in their path, and generally be a pain in the ass. Better to have the data center build its own plant as locally as possible.

Data centers building their own power plants raises a whole lot of other issues. I would think that the only practical source of sufficient power would be nuclear (in the form of SMRs) which would mean large numbers of plants spread around the country. There are many people who would be opposed to having a nuclear neighbor, and I doubt that it would ever be approved of by voters.

Another concern is where to source sufficient fuel for all these plants.

I suspect that there will be self-powered, behind the meter data centers operating at some point in the future, built and overseen by our AI robot masters. Perhaps in orbit or on the moon.

Given the scale of usage, on site power makes sense/used to be pretty normal for a lot of industries/locating them as close as possible to a power plant with excess power.

(I think Al smelting was another major user of power, but TMK they always operated on waste power as much as possible)

Why aren't the roofs of all those data centers completely covered with solar panels?

This is a cluster fuck here. This is a long article but covers a lot of the impacts here in Texas. Our grid isn’t set up for any of this, and neither is our water supply. This will fuck over citizens. kWh and H20 costs will go up because of these AI centers. Citizens shouldn’t be taxed for others profits.

https://www.texastribune.org/2...tricity-power-water/

quote:

Originally posted by Prefontaine:
Citizens shouldn’t be taxed for others profits.

I think this hits the nail on the head right here.

Hey man, you want to use AI to create a video that overwrites your boss slipping in a pile cow shit? Or the endless fat JD Vance videos? Or creating deep fakes.

You wanna sit there all day and ask AI stupid questions and to write your fucking term papers and to figure out all the shit you’re not able to do on your own?

Endless fucking selfies of you eating at the latest Chinese restaurant in town? Taking pictures of every fucking meal you eat? Posting your every goddamn thought on a TikTok or a YouTube?

Time to pay up! There’s a price to pay for where all that shit is kept and how it’s generated.

You created the fucking monster now it’s time to feed it!