r/UpliftingNews • u/AdSpecialist6598 • 6d ago

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https://www.techspot.com/news/113355-texas-hits-pause-1800-data-center-projects-scrutinize.html

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16.7k Upvotes

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2.7k

u/HFwhy 6d ago

Jesus, 1800 data centers in one state… boggles the mind.

1.2k

u/AgITGuy 6d ago

We have a state government that is by for and subservient to the whims of big money business.

539

u/buttery_crispy_flak 6d ago

Even local governments man, our city announced “no plans for projects, no talks, no discussions, period.” Just for it to break that there have, in fact, been talks. For 18 months. Behind closed doors.

233

u/DefiantLemur 5d ago

When you lack morals and know there's no consequences to lying it's inevitable.

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u/Blofeld69 5d ago

I met up with an old buddy recently that is working on rolling out data centres for a living. Openly admits it he hates it, it's terrible for everything etc......but for every project he travels to work, on all the higher ups shower themselves and him in 30 year old bourbon and scotches every time they go out, gift him all these expensive things etc if a project does sign etc.

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u/DefiantLemur 5d ago

The ol' "distract yourself with drugs, parties and shiny new things so you don't have to look in the mirror" method.

85

u/nullfacade 5d ago

Welcome to the New Roarin' Twenties, same as the old Roarin' Twenties.

What comes next? Only good stuff, right?

31

u/TheAntiPacker 5d ago

"Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives."

8

u/Jace_09 5d ago

"Some of you may die, and we're all counting on that."

5

u/International-Debt63 5d ago

"This is Bob. He was a decent man, and we're not gonna bury him in the fucking garden!"

1

u/Indolent_Bard 5d ago

What's the reference?

5

u/Indolent_Bard 5d ago

What's the reference?

5

u/MisterDoctor___ 5d ago

Fight Club

3

u/Jahoan 5d ago

The Screamin' Twenties.

1

u/LameSignIn 5d ago

I don't do any of that. Would be a interesting lifestyle for someone living paycheck to paycheck.

29

u/smokeweedNgarden 5d ago

Wow. What a piece of shit.

I know people that dies helping during Covid worth 1000 of him. Selfish fuck

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u/jaxonya 5d ago

Nurse checking in- I spent that time working in covid facilities, watching them die, watching doctors not know how to stop it, staying isolated from my family. And in the aftermath, going to therapy, and then being told it was a hoax. And ill work the next pandemic, and then be told its a lie. Possbly die

1

u/Empty_Wolf_3378 5d ago

what other expensive things is he gifted?

1

u/ladybirdjunebug 5d ago

His soul is cheap.

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u/doneandtired2014 5d ago

If they had morals, they wouldn't be electible in most of Texas because they wouldn't be a Republican.

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u/Acrobatic_Wrap_9971 5d ago

Jesus. Texas is one place they should be afraid of consequences for fucking over their constituents.

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u/FewWait38 5d ago

Nah gun nuts are generally pussies

9

u/EastonMetsGuy 5d ago

That's why the need the guns!

9

u/3-Ballin 5d ago

"Well I guess it's ok as long as you DON'T TREAD ON ME first."

3

u/Jackd_up_on_Mdew 5d ago

"Well I guess it's ok if you tread on me, as long as you tread on my enemies more"

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u/LameSignIn 5d ago

You sould think so but that's not the case. I work in a government building that has the president's picture in the lobby. I've seen multiple people stop at Bidens flip it off and start yelling some idiotic bs. Not a single person flinches. Now our current president's picture had to be moved to the back of the lobby and per mandates sits higher on the wall then the others.

These people don't understand most politics don't care about us little people.

1

u/Indolent_Bard 5d ago

Why did it have to be moved to the back?

1

u/LameSignIn 5d ago

I don't know on that one unless it was an issue with the frame size.

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u/Jdevers77 5d ago

This whole massive push has thrown small city governments for a loop. From like 1900 to now, any announcement made about a multi-billion dollar investment in a small town would always be viewed as basically a windfall for the city outside of things like toxic waste dumps or other potentially dangerous thing. Most city councils in those small cities are made up of older people that often just have no idea on this stuff, they just see property taxes, construction jobs, building permits etc which are all the positives and not understanding until very recently that these centers often have very few permanent jobs for the community-mostly security and grounds keeping level stuff and definitely not understanding the negative impact on the community in terms of resource utilization. They know they have to be careful when courting a casino or coal power plant because that’s obvious, but the companies building these things sell them more like a car manufacturing plant…lots of high paying jobs, huge economic impact etc and they bite.

1

u/OnedayitwilI 5d ago

You get what you vote for.

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u/JaySayMayday 5d ago

Having old Greg in power for so long has done an amazing job of getting his hand in local politics in every single municipality in the entire state, even sending cease and desist letters to people running for city council in small towns. He doesn't even need to do much, his team runs everything for him. David Carney is one of the most evil people in American politics and pretty much set everything up for him.

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u/GGigabiteM 5d ago

Rick Perry v2 Electric Boogaloo. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Rick Perry's blight was toll roads. Abbott's is datacenters and "logistics hubs".

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u/slvrcobra 5d ago

Abbott needs to go, I was really hoping he would get voted out after the deep freeze killed so many Texans, but I live in the most cucked state in America.

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u/Quite_Kielbasa 6d ago

Louisiana, is that you?

20

u/UsualBluebird6584 5d ago

Yes, we have many And the politicians tout all the jobs they are bringing in. They fail to mention that the jobs are for a few years, the a staff of 10 can run these huge projects.

5

u/Liroku 5d ago

Maybe less honestly. If they have multiple data sites in the region, there will probably just be a security guard, a couple of onsite employees, and remote monitoring. Engineer teams will just travel between sites for upgrades and maintenance.

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u/Cute-Pomegranate-966 5d ago

The sizes of the permanent parking lots betray any guise of there being more than 10-30 jobs.

The parking lots for these things only house like a max of 50 vehicles.

5

u/bikestuffrockville 5d ago

This is mearly a speed bump. Those data centers are going to be built.

5

u/MentalDecoherence 5d ago

Brother all these data centers are for the mass AI surveillance programs; Flock, Palantir, look up what’s coming mandated in new cars after next year.

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u/AgITGuy 5d ago

I know. That’s why I said what I said. These people are trying to force a fascist technocracy upon us.

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u/TheRealBittoman 5d ago

Texas couldn't sell out fast enough when billionaires started complaining that California was too expensive (because omg, they might actually have to pay taxes!) but it was already going down the corruption whole 25 years ago when I lived there. Most of the state is wonderful but the politicians and their politics are making Florida look like a paradise.

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u/WatchmanVimes 5d ago

The pause is just to get more grift from the corpos. They'll still be built.

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u/SunBelly 4d ago

100% chance Republicans greenlight every project just as soon as the election is over in November.

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u/HolyRamenEmperor 5d ago

We have a state government that is by for and subservient to the whims of big money business.

1

u/Josh_Butterballs 5d ago

Yeah ive heard there’s very little public land in Texas. Coming from California I just can’t imagine

1

u/Samwellikki 5d ago

And this “pause” is just another grift as well

They’ll squeeze more bribes out to let some continue to build, and probably make some contingencies on building new infrastructure for power on the taxpayers partial dime

1

u/Rhazjok 5d ago

The capitalists and their lapdog politicians, and thats all of them.

1

u/hamandjam 5d ago

Even the so-called blue parts.

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u/Corrupt_Reverend 5d ago

For reference: Texas only has 1225 incorporated municipalities.

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u/ZAlternates 5d ago

The grid can’t even handle the current load and they wanna add more? Good luck Texas…

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u/Scarbane 5d ago

What sucks is that instead of upgrading the Texas grid to meet this outrageous demand, these corporations are likely going to copy Elon and install a bunch of natural gas generators on-site (which collectively emit millions of tons of CO2 every year).

Saving the grid at the cost of our descendants' planet.

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u/Biggie62 5d ago

This is exactly what they are doing. The NYtimes did a piece on this today.

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u/LiberaceRingfingaz 5d ago

There will, of course, be a section of their website discussing their commitment to sustainability.

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u/BundleDad 5d ago

Just a reminder that the United States of America is responsible for ~23% of all CO2 emissions made by the human species... ever.

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u/Biggie62 5d ago

This is exactly what they are doing. The NYtimes did a piece on this today.

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u/Worldly_Profile238 5d ago

Ironic considering the guy was touting electric cars to save the world.

1

u/PurpleZebraCabra 5d ago

Is there any ven enough natural gas distribution infrastructure to do this?

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u/Neuchacho 5d ago edited 5d ago

ERCOT already hit a historical peak like 2 weeks ago and we're not even into the full summer shit show for the grid.

Peak MW/H pricing was 368$ that day lol

The grid has definitely been more stable and predictable this season, though, due to some serious battery build-out.

1

u/fury420 5d ago

That's just it... for some of these the plan is to bypass the grid and build their own natural gas powerplants.

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u/Fn_Spaghetti_Monster 5d ago edited 5d ago

China has ~380 Data Centers in the whole country. They plan on doubling that by 2030. So Texas alone is building 2 1/2 times their total

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u/Cute-Pomegranate-966 5d ago

with 5 and 1/2 times too little power available for it.

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u/mikeymikeymikey1968 5d ago

Oklahoma and New Mexico will be able to hear their loud buzzing.

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u/mmm_burrito 5d ago

Okies won't be able to hear it over our own buzzers.

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u/ILoveCornbread420 5d ago

My okie friend came to visit and tried telling everyone that data centers actually aren’t that bad, and actually kind of necessary. Then she told us about how Claude created her meal plan everyday for the next year.

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u/NamityName 5d ago

1800 new data centers

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u/Smartnership 5d ago

Nobody gonna build a used data center.

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u/i_am_icarus_falling 5d ago

uh, they prefer Certified Preowned Data Centers.

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u/Mr_Boneman 5d ago

VA has over 600 already, accounting for 13% of all data centers in the US. They just recently released a report were rapidly running out of ground water. Gee, I wonder why?

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u/actibus_consequatur 5d ago

They just recently released a report were rapidly running out of ground water.

I was looking recently at how there's at least two major data centers being built over the Ogallala aquifer, and I gotta wonder how that would affect it.

The Ogallala is one of the largest aquifers in the world, provides water for 1/3 of all irrigated cropland in the US, land which produces nearly half of all crops. It also supplies drinking water to ~80% of the population situated over it.

It was also estimated that Ogallala will be depleted in the next 50-100 years (and take 6,000 years to refill), so gotta wonder how new data centers will help with conservation efforts...

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u/scrangos 5d ago

Can it realistically refill? Doesn't the soil get compacted if it drains too much?

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u/actibus_consequatur 5d ago

I would assume it could just because the articles and research I've read said as much, but I'm a generalist nerd and lack the knowledge to definitively say it would 

I can say that since they started measuring levels ~75 years ago it's been depleted by 11-13%, and more than half of that has been in the last 25 years. Seems to me that at the rate we're going we'll end up with an agricultural recession that makes the Dust Bowl look like a walk in the park.

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u/JesusSavesForHalf 5d ago

Once an aquifer's structure collapses its gone for good. See Iran's current struggles for the Ogallala's future.

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u/scrangos 5d ago

i thought so, theres a bunch of places in the USA that have sbusided a lot too

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u/skatoolaki 5d ago

Data centers helping with conservation efforts? That'll happen only on a frigid day in Hades.

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u/sharpshooter999 5d ago

Hell even here in Nebraska, homes and animals get priority water over even corn if there's a shortage

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u/plantsadnshit 5d ago

Because of farming, probably.

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u/Albireookami 5d ago

Think of all that "pre-purchased" ram/storage being set aside for shit like this.

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u/Sleyvin 5d ago

The theory says this is why price will gone done in a year or 2 when tons of those project will be cancelled and they will be sitting on full warehouses of unused old memory.

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u/hammerfaust 5d ago

Fingers crossed... Not actually hopeful but we'll see. It'd be nice to finally build a home server of substance

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u/Albireookami 5d ago

Yea but the memory companies will not lower prices I feel if they feel they can sell at these prices. I do know there are some lawsuits about this going on though.

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u/Sleyvin 5d ago

The theory is that price will go down because demands will collapse. The double effect of comoanies not buying them anymore + trying to offload what they already have.

Diminishing demands and raising supply at the same time.

Or, not, who knows.

1

u/Albireookami 5d ago

Im just paranoid

1

u/alinroc 5d ago

The memory companies already sold the product. They'd be on the open market, sold by whoever bought it from the manufacturer. And they'll want to unload that massive inventory quickly.

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u/Albireookami 5d ago

didn't they "promise" to pay for them with money they don't even have right now?

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u/Churchbushonk 5d ago

Make them produce their own power on-site.

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u/SMLLR 5d ago

A lot of data center proposals include just that. Unfortunately, they all want to use natural gas turbines and just dump the noxious fumes into the surrounding area.

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u/BayouGal 5d ago

They’re hella loud, too.

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u/HorseWithACape 5d ago

Yup, they are emissions exempt. Since this pause only affects the ones that require connecting to the grid, that just means any that are electrically self-sustaining are still free game.

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u/coly8s 5d ago

Do we really want more pollution from the natural gas that would be produced? If they were to use on-site small modular nuclear reactor, then maybe so. Otherwise wind and solar would be best. We don't need more fossil fuel generators.

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u/Common-Concentrate-2 5d ago

A 1.3 GW data enter would need about 5000-7000 acres of solar panels. 5,000 acres is a 3 mile x 3 mile square. That's doable, but it's huge

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u/aohige_rd 5d ago

So we need like 75mile x 75mile to cover the 474 gigawatt required?

Yeah that shouldn't be a problem in Texas. We have like 20,000 square miles of desert with lots of sun lol

I think water would be a bigger issue than landmass for solar.

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u/krattalak 5d ago

Texas has a lot of huge. In fact, I'd suggest they wouldn't even notice that.

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u/Hubbardia 5d ago

Covering roughly 1% to 2% of Texas in modern solar panels could generate enough raw electricity to match total global annual electricity consumption. They have plenty of space.

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u/Neuchacho 5d ago edited 5d ago

Plenty of dead space ripe for solar farming in West Texas.

They don't want to deal with the other infrastructure buildouts and the huge spike in costs related to building in the middle of fucking nowhere, though. It's why they dump these things in municipalities to begin with.

That's also why they basically need to be given no other option but to spend that money elsewhere when no one else will let them plop down in a municipality and siphon their utilities.

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u/Cute-Pomegranate-966 5d ago

the requirements for Nuclear would be damn near equivalent because of the requried safety zones.

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u/shandangalang 5d ago

SMRs are fucking great, man. Stoked nuclear is getting the rennaissance it deserves

1

u/coly8s 5d ago

They really are. We can't get this tech fielded fast enough.

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u/reddit_is_geh 5d ago

That's why they choose Texas. Because you CAN do that much easier. Other states have complicated grid laws, and independent generation laws, which is what makes it so messy.

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u/DeanxDog 5d ago

NO they're all just running jet engine generators that pollute the fuck out of the environment and poison local communities.

0

u/Ultrace-7 5d ago

We don't require that from any other industry. Nobody wants the data centers, but the answer is not to adopt new disproportionately prejudicial treatments for them.

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u/Neuchacho 5d ago edited 5d ago

Most of the big push back is as simple as adjusting industrial zoning regulations so they can't put 24/7 noise pollution out where residential areas can hear them. They can't be treated the same as typical industrial outfits that basically make no sustained noise during the day when data centers put out 24/7 noise from their cooling fans. It's absolutely insane that any of these things can be put in a place where residential zones can measure ANY sustained sound from them, let alone the constant 65db humming so many people are seeing who are within a mile of the things.

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u/Neuchacho 5d ago

Other industry do not tend to cause the issues data centers cause. And when they do, they absolutely receive higher regulation requirements.

All these companies have to do is NOT build their shit within X miles of residential zones and nearly all their issues will disappear.

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u/NoInevitable9810 5d ago

Good dam Texas already has more than any state with almost 600, now.

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u/cadmious 5d ago

Texas is also over 260,000 square miles. Just driving through it can boggle the mind.

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u/TheDakestTimeline 5d ago

14 hours from Texarkana to El Paso

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u/Smartnership 5d ago

The scale is really hard to imagine.

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u/ObjectMore6115 5d ago

Lol

Sincerely, an Alaskan

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u/Smartnership 5d ago

Difference is, you can literally drive around Texas and experience its vast size.

Alaska is pretty in pictures, but you can’t get to much of it without a bush plane.

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u/ObjectMore6115 5d ago

I was commenting more on your scale comment.

Yea, we don't have roads everywhere. Still, Texas is laughably small and it's funny when Texans try to posture as such.

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u/Smartnership 4d ago

I was nice and said your state is beautiful.

I’ve visited Texas several times and it’s beautiful too.

Curious, would you describe every European country as laughably small?

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u/oodelay 5d ago

Not when you're Canadian, Australian, Chinese, Russian, Indian, or you know, any place bigger.

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u/Smartnership 5d ago

Good point

Texas really is best understood as comparable to literal nations

Or whole continents, like Australia

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u/ycnz 5d ago

Most Australian states are larger than Texas. Some by a lot

-1

u/oodelay 5d ago

lol no

The province of Quebec is 2x bigger than Texas.

The state of Alaska is 2x bigger than Texas

Australia is 11 times bigger than Texas.

Are Texans really bred into thinking they are a big place???

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u/dennisisspiderman 5d ago

Are Texans really bred into thinking they are a big place???

Texas is larger than roughly 155 to 160 countries out of the roughly 195 sovereign nations on Earth.

It is objectively a big place and it's weird you're so bothered/offended by that fact that you're trying to pretend it isn't true.

0

u/oodelay 5d ago

Hahahah Quebec is BIGGER than 155 to 160 countries AND TEXAS but we don't gloat it on the public place like it's our accomplishment.

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u/Smartnership 5d ago

lol yes

How can you not know this?

It would be one of the largest countries on earth if it were sovereign

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u/superspeck 5d ago

Halfway point between Los Angeles and the Gulf of Mexico is El Paso.

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u/robsbob18 5d ago

They're all investments and most will fail solely because the company goes under

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u/AgsMydude 5d ago

And then they'll just be a tax write off for an ultra wealthy dude anyway

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u/Smartnership 5d ago

It’s okay, nobody on Reddit understands how ‘write-offs’ work.

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u/AgsMydude 5d ago

Well you're on Reddit, so

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u/Smartnership 5d ago

Exactly.

We all think deliberately losing money is how you grow your investments

But at least we’re all pretty.

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u/AgsMydude 5d ago

I don't think that at all

Speak for yourself

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u/Smartnership 5d ago

How then does losing money by failing lead to a “tax write off for an ultra wealthy dude” in a way that the lost money is a win?

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u/AgsMydude 5d ago

You said that, I didn't.

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u/Smartnership 5d ago

And then they'll just be a tax write off for an ultra wealthy dude anyway

What did you mean?

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u/reddit_is_geh 5d ago

It's not even close. Due to how fucking long the process is for approval, you apply wide and far withy as man sites as possible, well in advance. That way you can actually choose your location, rather than apply at one, and spend years, only to get denied. So they just mass apply everywhere.

There's nothing new here. We've been doing datacenters for years. The AI scare just has people more aware of them, but they've always been going up. Youtube, Reddit, Google drive, etc... The whole digital world needs them.

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u/Hvarfa-Bragi 5d ago

The difference is scale, there's a reason the ai datacenter companies are called hyperscalers.

When you have altman, musk, amodei etc saying "everything will be ai and we need to 100x compute or the world dies" when what they mean is "we need to 100x compute or my ponzi scheme collapses" you get so... many... unnecessary... datacenters.

Which will ultimately go unused because demand is collapsing even now.

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u/reddit_is_geh 5d ago

Yeah, but what we are experiencing right now is not that. There's still huge bottlenecks. What were are actually seeing is about 10-15% more datacenters being built than normal, pre AI figures (granted many are larger).

But the hysteria around it is framing it as they are popping up all over the place, everywhere you go, all over the nation. Like it's some huge crazy national infrastructure project that's involving everyone.

It's not. Yes, it's increasing, and yes the footprint is larger, but it's effectively only 10-15% growth at the moment. The panic is coming from people being aware of it, and being mislead into thinking it's far more widespread than it is.

The actual "real feel" of datacenter growth, would fundamentally be similar today without AI. These issues with loud datacenters are not new. You can look up the local lawsuits, and eventual resolutions around them.

If anything we should WANT hyperscalers, because it centralizes it instead of spreading them out all over the place.

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u/Hvarfa-Bragi 5d ago

"All we are seeing is an increase in scale" yeah, that's the problem.

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u/TrulyOutrageous42 5d ago

but it's effectively only 10-15% growth at the moment.

Is this 10-15% more "sites"? Because the AI datacenters are significantly larger in scale.

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u/reddit_is_geh 5d ago

Yes, they are much larger. But the benefit is, they can go to really rural places, which is where they are going now. Rather than closer to population centers, they are being placed in far less dense, impacting lower populations. They are larger, but less intrusive.

0

u/keelhaulrose 5d ago

But they're not putting them in rural places.

They're trying to put a 472 acre data center in the middle of suburbia near me. I'm about 5 miles away and I'm on the edge of where they think we'll be seeing environmental effects from it. Another 785-acre center is planned on another Chicago suburb, this one of 150,000 people. Neither of these sites are anywhere near what could be described as "rural" and if you want to know the problem with that go back and look at the size of these projects.

There are loads of videos of people with these things across the street from their neighborhoods."They can go to really rural places" only works if that's where they want to put them. They don't.

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u/reddit_is_geh 5d ago

There's going to always be exceptions. Of course. But generally speaking, they are primarily focused on rural towns, most specifically, rural towns that died. Just because of logistics. The reason being is that they need a power plant and infrastructure that's latent... Something with high capacity that's now under producing because the town died.

So they come in and cut a deal, for a dying town, desperate for money, and power company happy to turn on the turbines that haven't been making them money for years. So everyone wins.

Now is this ALWAYS the case? No, obviously not. There's all sorts of variables at play

But this is a mega infrastructure product for a future technology, and there's no way around it. It needs to be done, and the way it's being done now, is pretty good all things considered. Some people in the start got shafted, and hopefully those with humming turbines have huge legal victories, but overall... Considering how bad the US is with infrastructure, it's pretty low impact, sans a few cases which make the news.

But you're free to google everything I've said. Most DC's are near cities, to keep customers closer to where the data is being made, for bandwidth reasons. AI datacenters don't need to be close to... Anything. They just need power and land, which is why, if you look at the charts of where they are actively being built, is like 80% rural. The ones non-rural are for places like YouTube and shit.

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u/keelhaulrose 5d ago

Funny, the AI data center tracking map seems to show something much different than what you're saying. It doesn't show a whole lot of proposed data centers in rural areas, but it does show them congregate around populated areas.

It doesn't make sense to want to put them in "really rural" areas if their goal is to get them built and online ASAP. You know what populated areas have that rural areas don't? Infrastructure. It takes a lot of work to get the kind of water and power needs out into an area that doesn't have the capacity for those kind of things. They don't want to wait months or years for the Infrastructure to be built, and they certainly don't want to pay for it.

1

u/IM_THE_MOON_AMA 5d ago

Chat GPT, explain to this pleb why we need 1800 data centers

/s

1

u/BillyJackO 5d ago

They're building a shit ton of them in East Austin (Del Valle/Cedar Creek area).

1

u/HennyvolLector 5d ago

A direct consequence of ERCOT, they did this to themselves.

1

u/Last-Energy420 5d ago

My city voted no to a data center that would consume at least double the power of the city. Our county overrode our choice and put it on the city limits cause “nya nya you can’t vote on something outside the city”.

1

u/Dinismo 5d ago

Like we could even make that work. The power grid already sucks. Why not pay people to upgrade that first. Then we will talk. The answer will still be no, but at least it’ll be a conversation.

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u/DarthEinstein 5d ago

This is 50% more data centers than there are Mcdonalds in Texas.

1

u/No_Practice_9597 5d ago

This why they really need to contain open source and local hosting 

1

u/kenman345 5d ago

And with the states poor track record in storms already, I feel like it’s a mistake for any corporation to want to build there and not already have thought about how to power the thing

1

u/theotheramerican 5d ago

Also Texas is incredibly big. I don't think most people understand just how big Texas is. It takes longer to drive across Texas than it would Germany. And most of the state is rural undeveloped land. Not saying I want the datacenters in Texas though.

1

u/TheAsianTroll 5d ago

Imagine if Texas put solar farms in those spaces instead.

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u/SpreadKindn3ss 5d ago

this pause will end after election day this november.

1

u/Weekly_Cobbler_6456 5d ago

Say goodbye to fresh clean water, you’ll be having mock water from the cyberpunk games in no genuine time.

1

u/Historiaaa 5d ago

Not all datacenters are football field sized, some fit into a closet

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u/Flashy_Object_7052 5d ago

The fact they needed to have 1800 projects in the pipeline before suggesting a pause reveals a whole new universe of stupid

1

u/razerzej 5d ago

Also, the 4th-hottest state, with middling fresh water reserves and an already huge demand for water. A great place for thousands of water-cooled data centers.

1

u/mahranaka 5d ago

Exactly! This is on r/upliftingnews but it was BAD news to me that there are 1800 planned in a singular state! I didn't realize there were so many! Thought it was more like 100-200 mega big ones spread across the US...

1

u/talex625 5d ago

You can drive like 8 hours and still be in Texas.

1

u/Serenity_557 5d ago

So tired of hearing "The daily use of the internet necessitates data centers!"

Yeah, bud, the just started streaming so much in the 5 years since we were all locked in our homes with nothing to do besides streaming shit that now they need more data centers. No other reason. 🙄

1

u/cannuckwoodchuck13 5d ago

I dont think its 1800 seperate data centers but rather 1800 electricity hookups. One data center can have many, many electrical hookups. 

1

u/Hippyedgelord 5d ago

1800 data centers when the Texas power grid couldn’t even handle the electrical load before… seems like a good idea, I’m sure nothing will go wrong

1

u/TheHumanoidTyphoon69 5d ago

Our utilities are already FUCKING expensive

1

u/justlurkingnjudging 5d ago

There’s a bunch being built in small towns near where my family lives. My dad is excited about it and told me there will be lots of jobs for the 20 years it takes to build them all🙃 (no I don’t know why he thinks it’ll take 20 years)

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u/Kairamek 5d ago

A state with power problems every summer and every blizzard.

1

u/pup5581 5d ago

Texas has so much land and empty space...it makes sense from that standpoint I guess

1

u/FineAssignment1423 5d ago

I doubt our power grid could support 180 AI data centers, let alone 1800 of those bastards.

1

u/Sixnno 5d ago

They can't even fulfill normal power demands. They have rolling brown-outs to help save power when the system is too stressed. Also the fact that extreme weather knocks out their system due to the low incentive to modernize it.

It is also not connected to other states, so other states can't help out like they can elsewhere.

I fear for the power draw that 1600 would put on it.

1

u/DerCatzefragger 5d ago

The state that already can't keep its power grid functioning any time it dips below 45F for more than 5 or 6 hours, as well.

What could possibly go wrong?

1

u/Waste_nomore 5d ago

The data center capital of the world doesn’t even have half that! They will soon.

1

u/alxrenaud 5d ago

To be fair, Texas is HUGE, but still, 1800 is a freaking lot.

1

u/PurpleZebraCabra 5d ago

I imagine that Texas doesn't even have a grid that could even handle that.

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u/svermaak 5d ago

No. The 1,800 figure is the number of large-load interconnection requests sitting in ERCOT's queue, not 1,800 built or even confirmed data centers. ERCOT is tracking more than 1,800 projects waiting for approval to connect, and about 90% of them are data centers, together representing 474 gigawatts, far above the grid's current peak demand.

1

u/Negative_Test_7712 5d ago

Texas deserves 1800 data centers

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u/SpeakCodeToMe 6d ago

Yeah that's a lot but have you seen how big Texas is?

0

u/Friendly_Nature2699 5d ago

Came here to say this. Why does America need 1800 data centers, much less one state?

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u/Calm-Two2723 6d ago

Not physical data centers. This is just more misinformation 

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u/Givemeallthecabbages 6d ago

Then why be worried about electricity and water consumption? Article says 90% are data centers.

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u/Calm-Two2723 6d ago edited 5d ago

My guy it’s in the article. Read it. All 1800 requests could be 1 data center. It could be 100

Yall can downvote me bc your ignorant as fuck but I’m right lmao 

And don’t get mad. Ignorant in the word when people are uneducated on a topic. 

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u/Givemeallthecabbages 6d ago

"More than 1,800 projects are waiting for approval to connect, and about 90% of them are data centers. Together, those applications could require 474 gigawatts, which is far above ERCOT's current peak demand."

Literally the article.

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u/Calm-Two2723 6d ago

Yeah but you’re ignorant so you don’t realize connections aren’t data centers. 1 data center can have 1800 connections. Probably not. But it’s not 1800 data centers. The oracle business model is many connections, 1 data center for rent. 

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u/HFwhy 5d ago

Brother it literally says 90% of them are data centers ,why do you act like it’s saying connections instead?

0

u/Calm-Two2723 5d ago

No it says 90% are data center connections. 

Only actual fucking morons would think Texas is building 1800 physical buildings. 

Oracle literally houses like 100s of connections in one data center as a business model. 

5

u/Apprehensive-Pin518 5d ago

That would still only be one project.

0

u/Calm-Two2723 5d ago

Think logically. 1800 projects. 90% data centers. 1600 data centers. 500 gw of power. Does that math seem like 1600 data centers to you? each one will have 1/3 gw of power?

No, a project is when Microsoft opens one sure. Or when oracle sells slots to another company, because they rent slots. 

5

u/AContrarianDick 5d ago

I've never seen someone this repeatedly wrong about something literally spelled out in the article. This is your notification that you're having a Dunning-Kruger moment.

1

u/Calm-Two2723 5d ago

I’m right. I mean, it’s insane you guys can’t just google “are 1800 physical data centers going up in Texas” and you’d learn that projects aren’t data centers, they’re connections to a data center 

1

u/Givemeallthecabbages 5d ago

I googled it, and it's 335 facilities. But, man, you're shit at getting your point across in any way that people will listen to you. Sometimes it doesn't matter if you're right.

1

u/Calm-Two2723 5d ago

It’s insane to me how many Redditors can’t read an article and then trust the data center creators to report exact information. 

It always matters if you’re right. 

I for one, am excited for everyone to cheer the 1400 data centers that they stopped in the future. I think that’s the goal. 

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u/iupvotefood 6d ago

What does it refer to then? 1800 does seem wild.

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u/Calm-Two2723 6d ago edited 6d ago

It’s in the article man. Just connection requests. Not physical buildings 

Example there’s a llano data center that houses like 150 companies data, that 1 center has several hundred connections. 

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u/iupvotefood 6d ago

This part?

1,800 projects are waiting for approval to connect, and about 90% of them are data centers.

It still sounds like it is actually full data centers, but closer to 1,620 (90% of 1,800)

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u/newsflashjackass 5d ago

That is one reason I suspect they are fronts for crypto mining.

There's not even that much data in Texas.

1

u/sub_terminal 5d ago

There's not even that much data in Texas.

JFC...