On Monday, the governor ordered the Public Utility Commission of Texas and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas to audit all data centers wanting to connect to the state’s power grid.
Done right, it actually would.
Powering those centres would require building ton of new power generation, and in the case of a risk of running out of power, non critical infrastructure - like a datacenter - can be disconnected from the grid to redirect that power to the uses that actually matter. Like here in Finland, if we are risking blackouts for homes during winter for example, they will cut power to factories and stuff like that first in an effort to prevent it. It’s part of the contracts for commercial electricity connections, and they have to just accept that.
The bigger the section of non-critical infra you have, the more capacity you can free up in an emergency.
In Texas, though? Not very optimistic it would ever work that way.
No, they would not build enough because that would reduce profit. And households would pay more because demand is up, and households would get disconnected. We’ve already seen how they do things.
Case in point, they’ve reversed their outlook already.
Done right, it actually would.
Powering those centres would require building ton of new power generation, and in the case of a risk of running out of power, non critical infrastructure - like a datacenter - can be disconnected from the grid to redirect that power to the uses that actually matter. Like here in Finland, if we are risking blackouts for homes during winter for example, they will cut power to factories and stuff like that first in an effort to prevent it. It’s part of the contracts for commercial electricity connections, and they have to just accept that.
The bigger the section of non-critical infra you have, the more capacity you can free up in an emergency.
In Texas, though? Not very optimistic it would ever work that way.
No, they would not build enough because that would reduce profit. And households would pay more because demand is up, and households would get disconnected. We’ve already seen how they do things.
Case in point, they’ve reversed their outlook already.