Posted on 12/08/2025 2:54:09 PM PST by artichokegrower
This is from an article concerning the Gilroy, California Amazon data center
The first phase will be supported by 25 emergency generators, each with a 2.5 MW capacity to power the data center servers in the event of an emergency. Plans also include a 600-kilowatt generator to power other property functions such as lighting, also in case of an outage.
That would be 25 V-16 Catapiller engines.
And that’s just emergency. 3516s are huge. It would take a large room. LOL. And just to keep them warm. Holy cow. The costs are massive.
I don’t see how utilities can be expected to provide this kind of load. It would take years to build out, and not add any costs to res or other commercial rates. To my point, and I think understood above, with regard to small nukes, the data centers should do this themselves, with co-gen. My sinple understanding is that they will have to do this with co-gen. Other question, and I discussed this yesterday with a nephew, what is the load pattern on a data center? How much does it vary, hour to hour, day by day. (I will google it, using gemini, to add more load. LOL)
Also, thank you Artichoke Grower. I appreciate Artichoke Growers. I’m on your side.
Metcalf Incident on steroids.
I discussed that with my nephew yesterday, when we were doing two dump runs. I think it was a one off. In the utility world, and others, that was a big deal.
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I’m an SME in a related energy field but after a while, it all looks the same….
“….but if I owned or built a data center, I’d want a couple of natural gas powered turbines providing base power for the data center. Co-gen.”
I’m not sure any of that is the way to go… and I’m not sure that co-gen has application either. As always, the answer to this sort of suggestion is “well you might be right, but it will take an engineering feasibility study to determine that, and we don’t yet have a consultancy contract to do that.” Every situation, every set of requirements and every location is somewhat unique so it would be dangerous to generalize and speculate.
Always stop and look at the big picture. Where is the energy used in a data center? I’m going to bet that regardless of the location, the electrical load splits about like this… half for the IT equipment (servers, storage and networking) and about 40% for cooling and the rest for sundry infrastructure loads (lighting, security etc.) I suspect that the electrical requirements of the IT equipment are about the same anywhere so this means that the big thing to focus on is the cooling requirements…. there is a lot less needed to spend on cooling in northern climes than in southern ones. At that point, one is into other questions that pertain to where such a center should logically be situated….from a ‘cooling perspective’, one might like to locate it at the North Pole but other very real obstacles come up. What about having a good cooling water source.... is that available? Using the water just for cooling likely isn't that much of an 'environmental issue'. All this is stuff that gets addressed in feasibility studies….
You mentioned ‘co-gen’… this implies equipment that generates electricity and also produces heat at the same time i.e. waste heat that can then be recovered through exchangers etc. and put to some useful purpose. Here’s the problem… data centers don’t need heat since they already produce massive amounts of excess heat that the HVAC equipment has to get rid of. This is why they are so energy intensive. Want to have an efficient operation? Build out the data center and put it beside a secondary operation that can actually take advantage of all the waste heat that gets generated. Now instead of obtaining new energy for this secondary operation, you can run it on the 'free energy' from the data center. However, that isn’t all that easy either…. While there are copious amounts of waste heat being generated by a data center, it is relatively low grade heat.
One last point…. a combined cycle gas turbine will hit about 62% efficiency whereas a reciprocating engine will hit about 42%. However, reciprocating engines excel in Combined Heat and Power (CHP) systems, where jacket water (80-90°C) and exhaust heat (450-550°C) can be recovered for heating… and this can boost the total energy efficiency to about 80-90%. This prioritizes useful thermal output over extra electricity, unlike a CCGT which focuses on a second turbine. This gets back to the issue mentioned above…. Is there an adjacent secondary operation that can be put up beside the data center that uses all that heat? If no, then going with a CCGT is likely the best way. If yes, a reciprocating engine may be a better option.
A related point to the last one…. Peak efficiency is always a good thing to keep in mind but most loads are variable. How much variability is often a function of the time of day…. data centers tend to be much busier during the day and less busy at night although perhaps not in the global world we live in and so that needs a feasibility analysis. If it is true, this means that there is less load at night and since it’s also cooler, it’s easier to get rid of all the heat. So if true, perhaps there is a fairly high degree of variability. All more stuff to analyze in a feasibility study……
More to the point where is the power going to come from? I’m fairly certain that. Californistan doesn’t have that much generation capacity to spare. And wind and solar are not only extremely expensive but unreliable as well. Several years ago we visited Joshua Tree National Park. On the way there we passed hundreds of wind turbines of which maybe half a dozen were turning. Same in Hawaii on the big island. Saw a wind farm with not a single turbine in action. A couple were missing blades. Some had black substance running out of the pod. Well the dumbass voters voted for the Democrats let them find out what they voted for.
thank you for you insights. Everyone can benefit from it. Also, my nephew and I discsussed the ‘refrigeration’ aspect, and we also conjectured what percentage that was. He thought 50%, and kind of nailed it. Wer’re not engineers. I suppose Vertive...that’s their business. Northern climates, and how to use low grade heat for other processes, it’s fascinating. Thank you for your detailed input.
BTW, I have to look up what in the hell a reciprocating engine is. I’m getting an educaction. One step at a time in life, even late in life.
To artichoke growers point, I chatted a couple of years ago with someone in the OK panhandle. He said the wind turbines run on a steady supply of replacement parts. It was well said. Can you imagine the cost of replacing a blade, or blades out in the ocean. Or say, up in the baltic. there must be studies on that.
Metcalf was a state level test run. It worked splendidly, cheaply, and is patternable. And the Government is not admitting that they know who did it.
The power companies took notice, and with a bit of sniffing around, I think and see them spending probably billions to mitigate that risk. Pretty expensive fix for half a dozen guys with rifles and radios.
With AI sucking so much juice, we’re just that much more vulnerable.
Grok:
“ Total federal spending since 2013 likely exceeds $13 billion, though not all is exclusively for physical attack prevention (e.g., some overlaps with cyber or weather resilience). These funds leverage public-private partnerships, requiring matching utility contributions.”
This EXCLUDES additional billions spent by power companies that Grok cannot estimate well.
Co-gen waste heat can be used to drive stream pump compressors for ammonia based cooling. Ammonia is especially good at taking advantage of waste heat. California gives co-gen permits to cold storage businesses, who then go on to make all their profit from selling excess electricity at inflated prices. They keep operating the cold storage business simply for show so they can sell the overpriced electricity.
One company that I have often observed in this field is a Finnish company called Wärtsilä Energy.... https://www.wartsila.com/ Go to the ‘Insights’ page at this link.... lots of good articles there.
https://www.wartsila.com/energy/solutions/flexible-baseload-power-plants/data-centre-power-solutions Here is one article that is geared for the data center discussion... about 1/3 of the way down the page is this statement which deals with my comment about waste heat and the need for data center cooling..... “Wärtsilä’s advanced combined heat and power (CHP) solutions allow data centres to explore the potential of using waste heat from engines to produce chilled water through absorption chillers. This integration can help meet a data centre’s cooling needs sustainably, with the plant’s fuel efficiency exceeding 80% in certain cases.”
Ammonia is especially good at taking advantage of waste heat.
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True... see also the link I left in above Post 33 in a response to Berkeley under cover. There is always going to be several ways to do it... my point being that the lower the grade of waste heat, the more difficult it is to do economically and efficiently.
“By the way, I was told LEDs would last 10 years and my power bills would drop significantly. All glaring lies.”
I have had one LED light go out in the last seven years.
My Kwhrs have gone down.
“That would be 25 V-16 Catapiller engines.”
Not even close.
Theoretically, they should last 10-11 years. But manufacturing may vary. And as far as power consumption, they use a fraction of the energy incandescent use. Example; I bought an LED string of the C9 Christmas lights. 8 watts for a string of 100, 300 watts for the same string in incandescent.
The push to ram EVs down everyone’s throats is to restrict the peasants’ freedom of movement. It has nothing to do with saving the planet. Democrats, socialists, and other leftist groups never met tax they didn’t like or a freedom they didn’t want to curtail
“The push to ram EVs down everyone’s throats is to restrict the peasants’ freedom of movement.”
And, exactly, how do EV’s restrict freedom of movement?
By the way, is this the company you were thinking about? https://www.vertiv.com/en-ca/products/
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