Governor Spencer Cox says nuclear, geothermal, and solar power should help fuel the colossal Stratos Project.
From an engineering perspective, running a steady-load activity like a data center on only natural gas is just stupid. Natural gas is expensive and finite. Its strength is that it's currently the best form of energy we have for rapidly fluctuating demand.
I'm beginning to think they haven't actually put much thought into this project. Who'da thunk.
I'm beginning to think they haven't actually put much thought into this project. Who'da thunk.
I've read that this was never intended to be a real project, and is basically a kind of scam by O'Leary to maybe get some permits etc. that he can then sell to other developers.
If that's an AI data center the load may not be that steady though
I was thinking the world's largest data center would be used pretty far and wide, and it should average out. I'm no expert on AI, though. The world's largest data center should have its own energy storage to smooth out the demand, anyway.
Actually, power draw timing is a huge issue, destroying electrical substations huge, with AI data centers.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.14318
Large Artificial Intelligence (AI) training workloads spanning several tens of thousands of GPUs present unique power management challenges. These arise due to the high variability in power consumption during the training. Given the synchronous nature of these jobs, during every iteration there is a computation-heavy phase, where each GPU works on the local data, and a communication-heavy phase where all the GPUs synchronize on the data. Because compute-heavy phases require much more power than communication phases, large power swings occur. The amplitude of these power swings is ever increasing with the increase in the size of training jobs. An even bigger challenge arises from the frequency spectrum of these power swings which, if harmonized with critical frequencies of utilities, can cause physical damage to the power grid infrastructure. Therefore, to continue scaling AI training workloads safely, we need to stabilize the power of such workloads. This paper introduces the challenge with production data and explores innovative solutions across the stack: software, GPU hardware, and datacenter infrastructure. We present the pros and cons of each of these approaches and finally present a multi-pronged approach to solving the challenge. The proposed solutions are rigorously tested using a combination of real hardware and Microsoft's in-house cloud power simulator, providing critical insights into the efficacy of these interventions under real-world conditions.
By Esha Choukse, Brijesh Warrier, Scot Heath, Luz Belmont, April Zhao, Hassan Ali Khan, Brian Harry, Matthew Kappel, Russell J. Hewett, Kushal Datta, Yu Pei, Caroline Lichtenberger, John Siegler, David Lukofsky, Zaid Kahn, Gurpreet Sahota, Andy Sullivan, Charles Frederick, Hien Thai, Rebecca Naughton, Daniel Jurnove, Justin Harp, Reid Carper, Nithish Mahalingam, Srini Varkala, Alok Gautam Kumbhare, Satyajit Desai, Venkatesh Ramamurthy, Praneeth Gottumukkala, Girish Bhatia, Kelsey Wildstone, Laurentiu Olariu, Ileana Incorvaia, Alex Wetmore, Prabhat Ram, Melur Raghuraman, Mohammed Ayna, Mike Kendrick, Ricardo Bianchini, Aaron Hurst, Reza Zamani, Xin Li, Michael Petrov, Gene Oden, Rory Carmichael, Tom Li, Apoorv Gupta, Pratikkumar Patel, Nilesh Dattani, Lawrence Marwong, Rob Nertney, Hirofumi Kobayashi, Jeff Liott, Miro Enev, Divya Ramakrishnan, Ian Buck, Jonah Alben
I'd hope it's not all AI too but the current situation being what it is... I can't rule it out
Pumped hydro, batteries?
Both good, but not available at the level natural gas currently is.
Manufacturing batteries at that scale isn't really any more environmentally friendly, and lithium is in high demand.
For pumped hydro, the issue, at least in America, is that where existing reservoirs can hold that quantity of water, it's already committed for other uses, mostly irrigation. Building out new reservoirs to store the water for electricity is a huge endeavor in and of itself.
Hopefully the shortcomings of batteries and pumped storage will be addressed in time for us to smoothly dial down natural gas usage before we run out, but capitalism doesn't typically work that way.
Batteries don't have to be lithium based. (Power density is not an issue for a building.)
Batteries stay around for a decade, gas needs to be bought all over again. When the batteries die, they are the richest source of lithium for new batteries. Speaking from an EU perspective with mandatory recycling quotas for raw materials.
the state’s Republican governor has now asserted the project will “never” be solely powered by natural gas.
“That’s never going to happen,” Governor Spencer Cox told The Salt Lake Tribune last week. “The very first phase will be natural gas, but the other phases should not be. They should be nuclear, and they should be geothermal, and solar and other technology.”
Extremely misleading headline.
The location was chosen specifically for its access to a natural gas pipeline.
The only news here is that the government is under enough pressure that they feel the need to step up their campaign of lies and disinformation
The plant that will generate electricity for the data complex would be powered “100 percent off the Ruby Pipeline,” a MIDA official said in April.
But after weeks of protests, reams of comments against the project, and disgruntled Utahns digging into state leaders’ finances and family businesses, the state’s Republican governor has now asserted the project will “never” be solely powered by natural gas.
“That’s never going to happen,” Governor Spencer Cox told The Salt Lake Tribune last week. “The very first phase will be natural gas, but the other phases should not be. They should be nuclear, and they should be geothermal, and solar and other technology.”
Skip the nukes please
Imagine the data centers ran 100% on solar energy.
