Great CNBC report above profiles Elon Musk’s “Colossus” Data Center just outside Memphis in South Haven, Mississippi.
Takeaway: Primary objections to this facility stem from the install of a large number of gas turbines, essentially big jet engines, to power the facility, without proper pollution control or sound mitigation (if that’s even possible).
This is the configuration that is most problematic from a climate perspective, as well.
The report has interview clips from Jigar Shah, former Director of the Department of Energy Loan Program Office under Joe Biden, and one of the sharpest observers in this space.
Mention is made at the end of how other communities are attempting to head off this kind of fiasco – Illinois new Data Center Power Act is given as an example.
Key concepts would be – Bring your own Clean Power, no jet engines, get a plan on the water issue. (clean power ie solar or wind, kind of negates the water issue when coupled with closed loop cooling systems)
The Associated Press recently reported that, “Michigan, Oregon and Minnesota led the way, enacting laws in the last 18 months designed to protect their pre-existing requirements that electric utilities use only emissions-free energy sources by 2040.”
Compare and contrast Musk’s Memphis project to Google’s plans for new Data Centers in Michigan and Minnesota:
Google, Meta and others have resorted to modified jet engines, diesel generators and rebooting nuclear and coal plants to power their data centers, while asking electric utilities for grid upgrades. That’s contributing to rising electricity prices, up 42 percent since 2020.
Your home offers another solution to the energy shortage. The concept is simple. When thousands of homes are coordinated together by software into what are known as distributed or virtual power plants (VPPs), they can deliver or free up a power plant’s worth of electricity for the grid by dialing down consumption from smart appliances like electric water heaters or dispatching electricity from home batteries. This approach can bring hundreds of megawatts online in months, not the years it can take to build a new power plant.
Transmission lines move electricity through space to where it’s needed. VPPs deliver power the moment it’s needed most. The grid tends to run at half capacity, because it’s built for peak demand, so storing cheap off-peak power and discharging it when demand spikes effectively creates new capacity. Home batteries can recharge later using cheap power — often wind and solar — as demand ebbs.
Last July, the largest residential test in U.S. history delivered 535 MW in California, enough to power half of San Francisco for two hours, from more than 100,000 home batteries in California. Building equivalent capacity from natural gas plants would cost twice as much, estimates the U.S. Department of Energy.
Last month, Google announced that its new Minnesota data center will help fund thousands of small, utility-owned batteries for homes and businesses across Minnesota, a VPP that will be part of 1,900 megawatts of new clean energy capacity powering the facility.
“We’re seeing a direct line of sight between a company building a data center and investment in infrastructure in people’s homes and businesses,” said Mark Dyson of the clean energy think tank RMI, who co-authored a report on how household upgrades can power data centers. “VPPs have been waiting around for a pile of cash and a crisis, and now we have both.”
The data center that’s been dubbed “Project Cannoli” will require so much power, it’s difficult to grasp. That quantity is one gigawatt — as much as DTE Energy’s Fermi nuclear power plant produces, or an average major city consumes.
But Google said that it will supply all the power needed, plus more.
“Google’s data center operations will be served by 2.7 gigawatts of new resources for the grid, including solar power, advanced storage technologies and demand flexibility,” Will Conkling, Google’s director of clean energy and power for the Americas, wrote in a blog post on Tuesday. “This Clean Capacity Acceleration Agreement with DTE (the same structure as the Clean Transition Tariff) will bring new, clean resources online, while supporting the state’s transition away from coal-fired power.
“As part of our standard approach to building new data centers, Google will fully cover its electricity costs and infrastructure needs, helping to ensure that its growth protects local ratepayers and actively bolsters the long-term resilience of the state’s electricity grid.”
DTE (large local utility) said that Google will directly support up to 450 megawatts of energy storage, and 1,600 megawatts (1.6 gigawatts) of renewable energy resources.
“The agreements DTE is filing include enforceable provisions to ensure Google pays the full cost of serving its load,” the company added. “DTE’s customers will not subsidize data center rates.”
Yes, the data center will demand as much power as 750,000 homes. But Google pledges to pay for it all, while adding massive amounts of renewable energy to the grid for the benefit of all.
Yes, the data center could suck up more than 2 million gallons of water a day, but none will come from local groundwater. The water authority serving Metro Detroit has far more than that available.
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Some worry the facilities will drive up electric bills as power demand skyrockets, simultaneously keeping Michigan hooked on gas-burning power plants.
Google comes to Michigan promising to pay for vast amounts of clean energy to ensure that’s not the case.
In a deal with utility DTE Energy currently up for state approval, the tech giant pledges to pay for a massive 2.7 gigawatts of solar projects, grid-sized batteries and demand flexibility to cover the proposed Van Buren Township data center’s 1 gigawatt load.
“We’re covering costs and making sure that these new resources are paid for by Google and not by other ratepayers,” said Tyler Huebner, Google’s head of energy market development for the Midwest, who sat for a half-hour interview with MLive.
Below, members of Michigan’s Public Service Commission explain the arrangement for an Oracle Data Center, now under construction just south of Ann Arbor, MI, to purchase 1400 MW of battery storage to back up it’s energy use, which will draw primarily from excess power on DTE’s system.