The research shows the rapid growth in the sector; active data centres have a combined capacity of 1.6 gigawatts, while all of the proposed projects would inflate that number to 13.2 gigawatts.
13GW is like 8-9% of Canada’s generation capacity. Prolly gonna be concentrated regionally so maybe even higher proportion of local generation. This cannot, not have impact on prices given that we’re not installing new generating capacity quickly at all (thank you Doug Ford in Ontario), and what we’ve seen elsewhere, we’re gonna pay higher rates and since electricity is an input to almost everything else, like oil, we’re bound to see higher inflation. I don’t want inflation and we’re not capable of planning industrial development so that we install the generating capacity first, then build damn the DCs, so I don’t want them. I don’t trust the industry and the investors behind it, and I don’t want to pay for it. At this point in time - fuck 'em. Once the current bubble has burst, I’d reevaluate. Right now it’s full of heavily invested and indebted liars, psychopaths and other grifters, none of which bodes well for a sane picture of the industry.
That’s a very informative CBC news article data data centres in Canada.
96 proposed hyperscaler DCs is excessive. Especially for water stressed regions like Alberta.
I believe we do need some more DCs for Canada’s own sovereign needs. With appropriate care for
noise impact and power/water usage to avoid causing undue problems. AI is a bubble but there
is a demand for it so better to use Canadian AI (cohere.com) hosted in Canadian DCs.
lemmy.ca itself is hosted in an East Vancouver data centre:
Good regardless of DCs. If and when they have the capacity, and places where DCs can pollute without harming people, there would naturally be a lot less opposition.
That’s right by highways 401 & 407 so it’s likely noisy there already. I don’t know enough if that is a good location or not but that looks like suburban sprawl style development.
Ontario has greenbelts. BC has Agriculture Land Reserves to preserve farmland for agriculture purposes.
The map doesn’t show it well but there’s residential neighbourhood very close to it. I posted abt it sometime ago but couldn’t dig up the pic. Highway noise is bad but it doesn’t do the subsonic 24/7 noise as far as I know.
given that we’re not installing new generating capacity quickly at all
You cannot install new generating capacity quickly. New SMR reactors will be online by 2030. Even gas plants can take a decade.
The real waste of datacentres is that by the time they are built, the fake industry behind them will be gone.
One could do solar and wind quicker but we can’t, because we don’t have any semblance of planning in our economy. So if they build the DCs now it’ll happen on market principles, which means competition for exisring electricity supply with poorer customers - all of us, as well as portable gas turbines where the grid has no capacity or the price is too high.
That’s already solved by only approving a specific amount of AI datacenter capacity per year, based on how the grid can be grown. BC is already doing this.
It’s not a reason to prevent AI datacenters entirely it’s just a reason to regulate them properly. If your government won’t regulate them, and you don’t change your government, then it doesn’t really matter anyways.
That Hamilton site is fed by gas plants in Nanticoke, so any grid strain will be addressed by massive gas burning 24/7, great for Enbridge and politicians friendly with Enbridge.
In regulation development conversations it’s the industry’s lobby talking to our gov’t. Experience shows we tend to lose. In the “should we build” conversations, it’s much easier for us to express our binary desire and for surveys to capute and relay to our gov’t. We tend to win more often. It’s much easier to sling loophole-ridden regulation as “we fulfilled people’s desires for regulation” than let DC builds go ahead when most of us don’t want them. So we scream no DCs to anyone and everyone. We use the tools we’re given.
I personally would much prefer to live in a situation where private capital is subsurvient to the state abd therefore democratically enacted regulation does what we want it to do and punishes capital when it oversteps. But that’s not our status quo and we can’t feasibly change it for at least another 4-5 years, prolly more like 10+. So I scream no DCs to whoever would listen.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/bakx-york-ai-data-centres-alberta-solomon-9.7222388
13GW is like 8-9% of Canada’s generation capacity. Prolly gonna be concentrated regionally so maybe even higher proportion of local generation. This cannot, not have impact on prices given that we’re not installing new generating capacity quickly at all (thank you Doug Ford in Ontario), and what we’ve seen elsewhere, we’re gonna pay higher rates and since electricity is an input to almost everything else, like oil, we’re bound to see higher inflation. I don’t want inflation and we’re not capable of planning industrial development so that we install the generating capacity first, then build damn the DCs, so I don’t want them. I don’t trust the industry and the investors behind it, and I don’t want to pay for it. At this point in time - fuck 'em. Once the current bubble has burst, I’d reevaluate. Right now it’s full of heavily invested and indebted liars, psychopaths and other grifters, none of which bodes well for a sane picture of the industry.
I do run local AI btw.
That’s a very informative CBC news article data data centres in Canada.
96 proposed hyperscaler DCs is excessive. Especially for water stressed regions like Alberta.
I believe we do need some more DCs for Canada’s own sovereign needs. With appropriate care for noise impact and power/water usage to avoid causing undue problems. AI is a bubble but there is a demand for it so better to use Canadian AI (cohere.com) hosted in Canadian DCs.
lemmy.ca itself is hosted in an East Vancouver data centre:
https://lemmy.ca/post/37453471
There’s a big news release today about an additional 14GW of clean electricity projects for Eastern Canada:
https://lemmy.ca/post/69504197
So Quebec looks like a good place for many new data centres with cheap and clean power.
Good regardless of DCs. If and when they have the capacity, and places where DCs can pollute without harming people, there would naturally be a lot less opposition.
Not 300m away from the nearest row of houses.
That’s right by highways 401 & 407 so it’s likely noisy there already. I don’t know enough if that is a good location or not but that looks like suburban sprawl style development.
Ontario has greenbelts. BC has Agriculture Land Reserves to preserve farmland for agriculture purposes.
Found it - lemmy.ca/post/63312400. This is the pic they don’t show in the articles.
Here’s a bit of a zoom out of the situation in case it looks like it’s just one row of houses:
Aaadn FUCK ME, just as I was doing that, I realized that’s ANOTHER DC on Argentia Rd. The one that got shutdown in Mississauga is here:
The one in Etobicoke is still under review. Seems like the people from the hood are pestering the city about it.
The map doesn’t show it well but there’s residential neighbourhood very close to it. I posted abt it sometime ago but couldn’t dig up the pic. Highway noise is bad but it doesn’t do the subsonic 24/7 noise as far as I know.
You cannot install new generating capacity quickly. New SMR reactors will be online by 2030. Even gas plants can take a decade. The real waste of datacentres is that by the time they are built, the fake industry behind them will be gone.
100%
One could do solar and wind quicker but we can’t, because we don’t have any semblance of planning in our economy. So if they build the DCs now it’ll happen on market principles, which means competition for exisring electricity supply with poorer customers - all of us, as well as portable gas turbines where the grid has no capacity or the price is too high.
Ontario built a lot of wind power with Samsung, in a deal that angered everyone. Both Liberals and PCs have been blocking wind farms in Lake Ontario which resulted in a huge lawsuit and revelations that our government destroyed evidence proving they did this.
But hey, sucker taxpayers pay lawsuits, not political parties.
That’s already solved by only approving a specific amount of AI datacenter capacity per year, based on how the grid can be grown. BC is already doing this.
It’s not a reason to prevent AI datacenters entirely it’s just a reason to regulate them properly. If your government won’t regulate them, and you don’t change your government, then it doesn’t really matter anyways.
That Hamilton site is fed by gas plants in Nanticoke, so any grid strain will be addressed by massive gas burning 24/7, great for Enbridge and politicians friendly with Enbridge.
In regulation development conversations it’s the industry’s lobby talking to our gov’t. Experience shows we tend to lose. In the “should we build” conversations, it’s much easier for us to express our binary desire and for surveys to capute and relay to our gov’t. We tend to win more often. It’s much easier to sling loophole-ridden regulation as “we fulfilled people’s desires for regulation” than let DC builds go ahead when most of us don’t want them. So we scream no DCs to anyone and everyone. We use the tools we’re given.
I personally would much prefer to live in a situation where private capital is subsurvient to the state abd therefore democratically enacted regulation does what we want it to do and punishes capital when it oversteps. But that’s not our status quo and we can’t feasibly change it for at least another 4-5 years, prolly more like 10+. So I scream no DCs to whoever would listen.