Comment on Texas Needs Equivalent of 30 Reactors to Meet Data Center Power Demand

• nothingcorporate@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Every Texan I know has a generator to deal with the unreliability of the grid, and there’s never been an article about someone in Iowa getting a surprise $100k electric bill…and the average wage in Texas is substantially lower than in “left wing” states like California or Washington…so not sure you’re making an apples-to-apples comparison, but time will be the judge, we can all check-in in a year and see how this plays out. Does Lemmy have a remind me! bot?

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  • sleep_deprived@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Texan here. I don’t have a generator. Blackouts basically haven’t been a thing in my area since like 15 years ago, so it really depends on location. Also my electric bill works the same way as it would in any other state; the problem is when people buy electricity at what you might call “market price”; most of the time it’s cheaper, but you get fucked over sooner or later. It’s kind of like that story about people’s AC being controlled by the power company. They signed up for a program that explicitly set your AC higher during high-demand periods and then surprise Pikachu faced when the company did what they said they would do.

    That said, our grid is still definitely trash (as are many other things here) and I’m desperately trying to move. Basically the only thing we’ve got going for us is the food is amazing.

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    • tal@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      They signed up for a program that explicitly set your AC higher during high-demand periods and then surprise Pikachu faced when the company did what they said they would do.

      If the price swing between peak and off-peak is dramatic enough, I guess one could probably cool water during off-peak hours and then use a heat exchanger or something to use it to sink heat during peak hours.

      home.howstuffworks.com/ac4.htm

      Chilled water systems - In a chilled-water system, the entire air conditioner is installed on the roof or behind the building. It cools water to between 40 and 45 degrees Fahrenheit (4.4 and 7.2 degrees Celsius). The chilled water is then piped throughout the building and connected to air handlers. This can be a versatile system where the water pipes work like the evaporator coils in a standard air conditioner. If it’s well-insulated, there’s no practical distance limitation to the length of a chilled-water pipe.

      That’s not intended to store energy, just transport it, but I’d imagine that all one would really need is that plus a sufficiently-large, insulated tank of water.

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  • bitwolf@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Wanting to add that Washington, particularly Tacoma and other nearby counties are some of the only major cities whose power comes 100% from renewables.

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  • Amoxtli@thelemmy.club ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    California pays 19 dollars per kilowatt hour. Texas grid is better.

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    • Cort@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      No dummy, you’re missing a decimal point. California only pays 19 CENTS per kwh.

      And if conservative Texas is so great how come they pay 20% more per kwh for electricity than deep blue Washington State?

      Everything’s bigger in Texas, especially the idiots & excuses.

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      • Amoxtli@thelemmy.club ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        Washington has hydroelectric sources. 67 percent. Wind and solar are a tiny portion of its energy mix. Even nuclear powet exceeds wind and solar. Nice try.

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      • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        Washington State?

        Washing State has a ton of hydro, because they get a ton of rain in the mountains, thus near-constant hydro power supply. That really won’t work in Texas.

        I live in Utah and we have pretty average prices (about $0.12-0.13/kWh), which is pretty decent considering we have a competitive amount of renewables and a similar lack of hydro options.

        I grew up in WA and we had a lot of cool classes about the geography of the region, especially things like the Grand Coulee Dam. I even took my kids there to show how hydro works. We have dams here in UT, but they’re mostly to preserve water for the summer when we get almost no precipitation.

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      • obviouspornalt@lemmynsfw.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        Deep blue Washington state has the advantage of giant amounts of hydroelectric generation combined with a relatively small population to consume it.

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    • tal@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      California pays 19 dollars per kilowatt hour.

      I think that you might be thinking cents, not dollars.

      Typical residential electricity prices in the US are two digits number of cents per dollar.

      Also, I’m pretty sure that California’s residential average price in 2025 is above $0.19. Maybe that’s the cost of generation alone or something.

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      • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        Exactly. I have family in CA, WA, and I live in Utah, which is quite the gamut when it comes to electrical generation. CA is by far the most expensive, followed by UT (we’re pretty average), followed by WA (cheap due to tons of hydro). CA is expensive because their electricity policies are stupid IMO, UT is cheap because we’re somewhat reasonable (too much fossil fuels, but competitive renewables), and WA is cheap because they have more water than they know what to do with (ironically though, their water prices are higher than ours).

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    • Ledericas@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      not even close lol, having systemic blackouts randomly is not an indication of a good grid.

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