Just finished doing a series of sessions educating Michigan Rural Democrats on data center facts and fictions. This news report just illustrates vividly one of the key points I made.
Fact: Some data centers make noise that drives neighbors nuts.
Clarification: These projects are those that have chosen to skip connecting to the power grid, and built their own “behind the meter” power supplies, generally with giant gas turbines.
These kinds of facilities are responsible for many of the horror stories that arise out of Data center development, and the concerns about blowing up climate goals.
Fortunately for us, this solution is one that is simply not going to work for a large number of locations, for reasons that are economic, social, and plain physics.
Below, Jigar Shah explains.
The solution is for Data centers to “Bring Your Own Clean Energy” – the preferred acronym is BYOWNCE.
One solution that is being implemented at an Oracle “Stargate” project in Saline Michigan, the developer will be providing, at its expense, 1400 Megawatts of Battery storage, which will be operated by the local utility, DTE.
Michigan Public Service Commissioners explain below.
Using Hyperscaler’s motivation to get up and running to incentivize them to underwrite state’s clean energy transition.
This is the way.