Texas Needs Equivalent of 30 Reactors to Meet Data Center Power Demand

First 0 nuclear reactors will be built anywhere in US before 2035.
Texas is actually a renewables leader because, believe it or not, it has the least corrupt grid/utility sector, and renewables are the best market solution.
Even with 24/7 datacenter needs, near site solar + 4 hour batteries is quicker to build than fossil fuel plants and long transmission, and it also allows an eventual small grid connection to both provide overnight resilience from low transmission utilization fossil fuel as peakers anywhere in the state as well as export clean energy on sunnier days.
Market solutions, despite hostile governments, can reduce fossil fuel electricity even with massive demand surge. One of the more important market effects is that reliance of mass fossil fuel electricity expansion and expensive long high capacity transmission, would ensure a high captive cost at high fuel costs because of mass use, in addtion to extorting all regular electricity consumers. Solar locks in costs forever, including potentially reducing normal consumer electricity costs.

So why is it the duty of our country to gather all electricity possible for the richest people to waste on burning out GPUs so they can lose money on free chatbots?
- For the same reason housing should be a speculative investment, and healthcare services available only to the highest bidder.

How many do they need in the winter, tho?

Data centers need to bring their own power.
- To a significant extent, they do, contracting for construction of generation and transmission (very often renewable), at least at the largest scale.
  But, it's (mostly) all on the grid.
  With demand like that, it's not like there isn't significant negotiation with the local power company, especially because they're frequently built a significant distance from existing large power infrastructure.
  Heck, all the big 3 cloud providers signed deals for nuclear generation in the last few months. https://spectrum.ieee.org/nuclear-powered-data-center
  Here's just one more article about these sorts of investments: https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/clean-energy/google-has-a-20b-plan-to-build-data-centers-and-clean-power-together
- In a well regulated way that includes oversight, yes.

The one state that refuses to connect to the interstate power grid and has Uber-like surge pricing on electricity? Yeah, I'm sure this won't result in regular people footing the bill for more billionaire profits.
Texas is a joke, but not a good one.
- Uber-like surge pricing on electricity
  We don't really: that story you heard from a few years ago was the only company that billed like that. The customers made a bet that the pricing averages through the day (lower at night, higher cost during the day) would average out in their favor over fixed-cost billing, and frankly, it did right up until it didn't.
  They took a risk and got bit by, frankly, not understanding how the system works and basically ate the spikes.
  Everyone else paid $0.09/kwh or so during that whole period, and the electric providers ate the cost because when you're averaging out spikes across millions of kwh, it won't lead to bankruptcy.
- Texas pays 11 dollars per kilowatt hour. Far lower than left wing states and has a manufacturing base. The market grid bids down prices for the right to sell electricity. That is one major reason companies move to Texas. Louisiana and Oklahoma, and states may be cheaper, but they don't have a manufacturing base.
  
  Every Texan I know has a generator to deal with the unreliability of the grid, and there's never been an article about someone in Iowa getting a surprise $100k electric bill...and the average wage in Texas is substantially lower than in "left wing" states like California or Washington...so not sure you're making an apples-to-apples comparison, but time will be the judge, we can all check-in in a year and see how this plays out. Does Lemmy have a remind me! bot?

Hmm harness the holy light of the sun?
- But what about all that holy black ooze?
  
  But what about all that unholy black ooze?
  Demon blood made of 666 particles

One of the windiest, sunniest, emptiest places on earth and they want to waste water building reactors instead of renewables.
Hell, the geology means you can store energy in the ground using pressurized air.
- What? I've grown up around people in the nuclear industry, and nothing I've ever learned about the function "wastes" water.
  
  Not saying you're wrong. Renewables are absolutely preferable, and Texas is prime real estate to maximize their effectiveness. I'm just hung up on the "waste water building reactors" part.
  Guessing it was some sort of research about the building process maybe, that I've just missed?
  
  Building them doesn’t waste water, running them does. In a place with a lot of water they make sense but any industrial water usage in a place with limited water supplies - when there are lower usage alternatives - seems wasteful

So, exactly one uranium patch with a mk 3 miner stuffed full of slugs? Not including waste reprocessing or alternative recipes?
- Seems satisfactory to me.

Sounds like Texas will be a nuclear waste dump soon.
- Please! It would be such a nice improvement!
  I want to get out of here :(
  
  You and me both.