Like -- do these people have any self-respect? Good lord
13.02.2026 11:42
👍 3
🔁 0
💬 0
📌 0
Like -- do these people have any self-respect? Good lord
oof. it's bleak out here!
but to your point idk when that is and it’s likely not before a few bad events
i feel like there _must_ come a point where systems are telling data centers they can’t connect yet
damn. do you think there are DCs breaking ground that will basically not have figured their power out?
Wow. Buckle up, folks -- the data center infrastructure boom is just getting started. h/t natbullard and Halcyon!
(part of me wonders, do we have the infrastructure to support this level of investment??? What amount of that capex has a reserved spot for power already?)
IEA's press release from their Electricity 2026 report here: www.iea.org/news/global-...
Some helpful context from IEA via Semafor this morning: While data centers are shaping future load in the US, they are part of a bigger story of electrifying economies when we look across the world.
How many newsrooms could 1% of AI-related revenues sustain? 5%?
i don't know A amaro lucano well, so hard to say how faithful it is, lol. but -- does what it says on the tin! it's a little sweeter on the palate b/c of the lack of alcoholic bite when taken alone. maybe i'll add a dash of bitters and see where we get? still a very nice thing to lounge with
happy accepting gold at the winter aging millennial olympics for this NA italian amaro
In the context of load that is grid-transformational and unprecedented, with emergent impacts from multiple projects -- what can we do to understand and quantify grid impacts? subscriber.politicopro.com/article/eene...
Our tools for evaluating costs often assume a) changes at the margin and b) looking backward, rather than forward (as in cost-of-service-studies).
One thing I haven't seen discussed (and another insight from thinking about unexamined, load-bearing assumptions) -- do we have the tools and framework to understand the impacts/costs of new data centers on the grid?
Contrary to these folks, I personally found it quite easy to not be in the Epstein fiels
Paraphrased:
One venture capitalist who used to work at OpenAI told me that obsessing over who has the best model is no longer an issue... if OpenAI focuses on what it has, which is a consumer product with a huge audience, and can retain and monetize them, it will be successful
In @financialtimes.com's briefing this morning, the inevitable logic of enshittification rears its head at OpenAI: pocketcasts.com/podcast/ft-n...
shout out to @pluralistic.net.web.brid.gy of course!
Sources:
US households: EIA www.eia.gov/energyexplai...
Costco: Dave Larson www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...
Gen capacity: NERC www.nerc.com/globalassets...
Data centers: Cleanview www.distilled.earth/p/these-data...
- The top 9 data center projects by capacity (from Cleanview) add up to ~26 GW of demand.
So -- if we were powering them with what's online today, those 9 projects would use 1/30th of the country's electricity generation. Whoa.
It can be hard to hold onto a sense of scale when we're talking about the grid. A few references::
- Each US household uses ~1 kW of demand.
- One Costco uses ~1 MW of demand (not sure if that's average or peak!)
- There's 1,000 GW of generation today, growing fast
More to come from us on this!
NOVEC's 2025 large load request to PJM: www.pjm.com/-/media/DotC...
NERC's LTRA here: www.nerc.com/globalassets...
Thinking through data center connection in this way changes the implications of NERC's graph -- rather than telling us where resource adequacy risks are rising, it might tell us instead where data centers connections are more likely to be delayed.
To me, the natural unchallenged assumption? Whether we should treat data-center load ramping as fixed in timing & magnitude, and how certain it is. We've already seen (e.g., NOVEC), load forecasts get pushed back because of lack of transmission capacity.
This gets us closer to a "Agree on Decisions" framework than a "Predict then Act" one -- and doesn't necessarily require that everyone agrees on what's coming next.
We've started to use Decisionmaking Under Deep Uncertainty (DMDU) to inform how we plan under rapidly-changing, unprecedented & highly uncertain conditions. One early insight: re-evaluate load-bearing assumptions in times of change.
I skimmed through the NERC Long-term Reliability Assessment that came out last week. Lots to dig into in there -- but I think we can all agree that grid conditions are getting tight amidst forecasts of a data-center-driven demand boom in the short term.
rooting for the patriots (lawful evil) in the super bowl because then UNC (neutral good?) would be the 6th school to produce both a super bowl QB and a president
Sherill's EOs here: www.nj.gov/governor/new...
Minding the Regulatory Gap here: rmi.org/insight/mind...
This BPU study (and the call to oversight of tx buildout) caught my eye. This is a step in the right direction -- we need public transparency and oversight (and agencies that have the capacity to apply it!) as we kick off a data-center-powered boom in infrastructure building.
I've been reviewing NJ Gov Mikie Sherrill's day-one executive orders with some interest this morning--they're a fascinating snapshot at how we're defining the problems we're facing and what options are on the table for doing something about it.