Post #2800128

2026-05-13 21:58 UTC

9GW indeed seems improbable, impossibly huge. Less so if off-grid, run directly on global warming as this article reckons? "At full buildout, the campus would reach 9 GW, all produced on-site through a connection to the Ruby Pipeline, a 680-mile interstate natural gas line that crosses northern Utah on its route from Wyoming to Oregon. MIDA executive director Paul Morris told county commissioners that the facility “will not take one electron” from the existing grid" https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/kevin-o-learys-9-gw-utah-data-center-campus-approved

Replies (2)

@JulianOliver@mastodon.social 2026-05-13 23:05

Looking back it seems there is a pattern with these AI DC announcements where the wattage consumed is itself the investor hook, as they translate it as AI workload capacity. So while people that care about the wealth gap, water you can drink & not killing planets look at these numbers with disdain, for the oligarchs behind these things bigger numbers are better.

Open ##2800129
@futuresprog@mastodon.nzoss.nz 2026-05-13 22:03

Fracking turned the US oil industry into an oil and gas (methane) industry. Gas pipelines have been built to allow methane to be transported rather than flared (or silently leaked) at the well head. Lots of these new data centres have gas generators burning the “waste gas”. Take a look at the xAI data centre and the NAACP lawsuit against it. With this threatened build in Utah now the pollution will be in white people’s backyards. https://naacp.org/articles/naacp-sues-xai-illegal-pollution-data-center-power-plant @JulianOliver@mastodon.social

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