Meh, I don’t trust telus for anything ‘canadian’ anymore. Email with Telus! … oh, it’s google / microsoft. VoIP with Telus! … oh, it’s RingCentral.
These datacenters will somehow just be a thin veneer for a US outsourced arrangement, with Telus functioning as a Canadian frontman.
Telus’ existing KIDC Kamloops data centre holds up to 12,500 GPUs and is capable of generating up to 25 megawatts of power. Its M3 Vancouver facility will be of similar scope, with 13,000 GPUs planned and an output of 26 megawatts. Its downtown location, however, will scale significantly higher, housing more than 50,000 GPUs at a facility capable of generating up to 100 megawatts of power.
This wording has to be a mistake. Datacentres don’t generate power. They consume it.
generating up to 100 megawatts of
powerheat.
What??? I was thinking that they’d stick such a thing somewhere like Castlegar, where there’s already power generation and no potential for water and energy shortages, plus a community benefit for the added jobs.
Sticking it in the most expensive real estate in BC, where there’s already water rationing and a heavy drain on power generation?
I fail to see ANY upsides.
It’s a weird choice for sure
The proposed facilities include a 100,000-square-foot, repurposed facility in the Mount Pleasant neighbourhood, as well as a 400,000-square-foot development at 150 West Georgia—adjacent to Vancouver’s BC Place stadium. Both neighborhoods are densely populated, with the downtown area counting tens of thousands of residents and Mount Pleasant being home to more than 30,000 residents. BetaKit reached out to Telus to ask how the company plans on integrating the facilities into such densely populated neighbourhoods, but has not yet received a response.
Putting one downtown between the stadium and the new art gallery is a weird enough choice already, but putting one in a residential area like Mount Pleasant seems crazy.
Look, we do need data centres in Canada. I’m tried of only being able to rent servers in the US or Europe. We have a couple, but not enough to meet the demand needed to drop Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud.
However, this is a stupid choice. There are a fuckton of places in Canada with abundant resources/water, lowish population density, and educated people. Pick one of those.
NIMBY
Fuck this.
The interior is facing one of the worst summers in decades. Hot, dry weather and water restrictions everywhere. Not entirely sure hyper-thirsty data centres are such a good idea unless their cooling systems are mostly closed.
once the chatbots evolve into skynet, they’ll invent magical technologies that solve all of our problems for us
BC has been net buying energy from the USA the last 3-4 years. Expectation is that drought from climate change will crater hydro production in the coming years. BC Hydro is already in low key panic about energy in the province. Second or third call to power in as many years. So the government approves $9B data centers to create 500 jobs instead of funding schools, healthcare, and transportation infrastructure. FFS.
I checked the data from here in case you’re interested. These are the US intertie flow numbers but they have Alberta numbers that are similar.
- 2021 BC net exported 3.92TWh
- 2022 BC net exported 3.65 TWh
- 2023 BC net imported 9.48 TWh
- 2024 BC net imported 7.57 TWh
- 2025 BC net imported 2.77 TWh
- 2026 Jan to Apr BC net exported 0.48 TWh but importing from AB, and the dry summer months are still ahead of us so we’ll see.
- NB: “net buying” is not the same as “net exporting” even if I think that’s what you meant. The timing and pricing of when our exports are bought and sold mean that BC could make money even if we sold less energy than we bought.
I do worry about the droughts predicted over the next decade, hopefully we can find suitable places to build wind/solar and build there.
