This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Yep, soon enough we'll all be just as fucked as Texans during a cold snap.
Idea: put the data centers in Texas. They have their own grid separate from the other two. It'll be fun.
What's the difference between Texas and taxes?
Taxes keep you warm in the winter
But we pay for utilities separate from our taxes.
Exactly my point. We (royal we, referring to a large proportion of US inhabitants) pay a privately owned corporation for services essential to living. They are allowed to extract profit via rate hikes and service cuts and are additionally allowed to develop monopolies. Dead people are a sacrifice private industry is willing to make in pursuit of profit (see: American death ensurance).
The "separate but equal" Texan electrical grid is a textbook example of why utilities management should remain under the purview of a publicly-accountable governing body. My quip is dark because people died. Its also true. Its meant to quietly challenge the concept that a government levying taxes is tyrannical.
utilities management should remain under the purview of a publicly-accountable governing body
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Utility_Commission_of_Texas
Did you even care to read that article?
What do you think "investor-owned electric utilities" means? My WHOLE FUCKING POINT is that "competition" and "investor-owned" in the context of public utilities and services kills people.
Here, have a Wikipedia article;
Maybe Texans should elect someone who won't appoint stooges to the PUC
Maybe the United States should pass laws that force public utilities to be owned by the public and operated as a nonprofit?
Tax dollars are/should be used to fund and improve the grid
America is an existential threat to the world.
Two thirds of the country allowed this.
Bad election system
All for some shit none of us asked for
Shit that's actively ruining the world, actually.
Thank god for this perceptive watchdog, or we may have never known!
Captain Hindsight, signing off! 🫡
That's Capitalism, working! The peasantry don't need water or electricity. They can use candles and go to the creek.
-- Every CEO, probably
At some point, you are back to city states.
Many billionaire techbros are proposing just that. Back to serfdom.
Ah no, i meant, if basic services and law get too unreliable, cities as the next big entity have to take them on.
Use water for free?! You anti-capitalist commie!
TL;DR: American power grid sucks and allows connecting extreme variable loads without any mitigation measures.
trying to modernize it should be a national priority... but it doesn't score any political points so nobody cares.
people just want to agonized about plants, but not about how the power is managed or transmitted, which is often running on 1950s tech.
It was modernized after the great blackout in 2003. But it seems it's outdated and failing all over again.
Major watch dog
Charlie! You can never come back!
What did we expect? We focused on military, not infrastructure. Our government believes solar, wind, and hydro is useless and clean coal is the only source
Not all of north america.
Canada is a world leader in nuclear and number 3 for hydro for example.
Being a world leader in nuclear power just means you have more than three power plants and you haven't been bombed by israel or the US for it.
And developed a reactor that doesnt need enriched uranium, removing the risk of weapons development.
And have been one of the few countries to deploy reactors under budget and on time.
You mean thorium reactors, invented in the US in the 1950s? Or recycle reactors, also invented by the US in the 1950s?
Also that second part also describes the actual world leader in nuclear power which has more than 100x the reactors of Canada and no nuclear disasters on record...
Like the "hasnt left the lab in 75 years" thorium reactors (Which current designs still need enriched uranium)? and the recycle reactors that produce weapons grade plutonium (Of course, also via enriched uranium)? Id love to see you
No I dont mean those, I mean the CANDU's, a viable system that has been operating for around the same amount of time thorium has been in development hell (again, 75 years).
Are you trying to say america has never had a nuclear disaster on record? Cause its pretty easy to google that US has had more nuclear accidents in the 2000's than canada has in the past century. The Three Mile Island meltdown was probably the worst nuclear accident in north america, its hardly reasonable to ignore it. Unless you count uranium mining accidents, cause then the Church Rock uranium mill takes the crown.
And which country has ~2000 nuclear reactors? I must have missed this in my research, with those numbers they account for approximately 4x the total number of reactors in the world, a surprising oversight. (Or are you doing some football math that 94/19 = 100x? Cause even if 94/19=5x then per capita america is still lacking)
China, was the magic answer, at 62 current reactors and another 50 expected to come online by 2030. Without a single nuclear disaster.
To the rest of your nonsense, CANDUs still require enriched uranium. As in, if the 'natural uranium' (the "organic" label of the nuclear world) does not have enough 238, it can't work.
Another one: https://threadiverse.link/sh.itjust.works/post/60035168
This is getting ridiculous, and untenable . Close them down!
Fuck AI.
Naw duh. You could probably replace 50 data centers with 12 jumping spider brains, those are some really intelligent critters..
"Accidental spider release plagues nearby town. 'Nobody wants to fall asleep anymore', says citizen."
That's why you only use the brains of the spiders, not the whole spider!
