Archived copies of the article:
At the end of 2024, a Silicon Valley team that included researchers from Stripe, Anthropic, Tesla, and elsewhere produced a report showing that solar microgrids are by far the fastest way to build the power that data centers need. “Estimated time to operation for a large off-grid solar microgrid could be around 2 years (1-2 years for site acquisition and permitting plus 1-2 years for site buildout), though there’s no obvious reason why this couldn’t be done faster by very motivated and competent builders,” the report states. That’s because essentially all you have to do is put up a bunch of solar panels and some batteries and run a wire to your data center—not build a huge centralized power plant and connect it to the grid. The report continues, “Off-grid solar microgrids offer a fast path to power AI datacenters at enormous scale. The tech is mature, the suitable parcels of land in the US Southwest are known, and this solution is likely faster than most, if not all, alternatives.”
I like this.
Siting them close to data centers, and connecting them to grid is easy because the utility controlled grid wants the datacenter customer. Utilities are slow to connect solar because they either own or can be bribed by existing FF plants.
A grid connection allows oversizing the solar production, and exporting. But where massive datacenter expansion strains the grid is during daytime peaks. Solar and batteries locally avoids that congestion, and then grid can provide energy and better utilize grid at night.
Yes, though in practice overall system cost and reliability can be improved by adding wind to the mix.
He doesn’t give a shit. He’s going to be dead within a decade.
Fingers crossed it’s the earlier part of that decade.
So say we all.
