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Originally Posted by Changing City
Not all data centre proposals are equal though. The conversation started with the claim that Bell's proposed AI centre outside Regina would generate employment, although Bell only identify 80 long term jobs to be created. One problem with a Saskatchewan development that relies on a lot of electricity is that very little power is generated from renewable sources - Saskpower says 48% is from burning gas, and 26% is from burning coal.
There's no specific plans to pay for the nuclear power plants that are supposed to replace the coal plants eventually, and they could easily cost $90bn at current costs for new nuclear generation. Saskpower already operate with a $10bn debt load. |
I don't know the economics behind the plan in Saskatchewan, but in the case of Alberta, the dollars work for data centres by using natural gas for the electricity as it is cheaper than renewables, and also with natural gas it's easy to produce high amounts of electricity on demand and it's easy to scale.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Changing City
It's been suggested that for the same level of investment, Saskpower could build about 1800 MW of wind and solar capacity, with the appropriate battery storage to cover the periods when the sun isn't shining or the wind isn't blowing. And there would be no additional cost of fuel, or atmospheric pollution generated.
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I'm curious to know who's suggesting it would be the same level of investment to use solar and wind with battery storage to power the data centre. Amazon invested in some solar farms in Alberta to power their cloud data centres in Calgary, but they have been upfront about it being more expensive. One main reason Amazon chose Calgary is because even they would be using solar power, they can still use natural gas powered electricity at the drop of a hat, and can use tons of it if they ever needed to.
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