[ExI] Fwd: announcement for talk "Storing Sunlight in Waste-derived Syngas"

[Keith Henson]

On Tue, Mar 31, 2026 at 1:06 PM <spike at rainier66.com> wrote:
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com>
>
> >>...If individual rich guys were to contract with wheat farmers to put turbines out there, then use the power generated to run data centers, not connected in to the power grid at all, then it's all good.
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> >...Data centers, for economic reasons, can't run on wind or other intermittent renewable energy sources alone.... Keith
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> Consumers will not tolerate intermittence in power either.  The 1999-2001 era rolling blackouts made that very clear.  The message was sent to politicians and the power company to make sure there will be no rolling blackouts, regardless of economic impact or what endangered species must be brutally extinguished.

That was Enron playing games by shutting down power plants for
maintenance when the power demand was highest to get a premium price
for power.  Eventually, their other criminal acts caught up with them.
The only reason the CEO didn't do jail time was that he died.

> The power must keep coming.  Result: the local peaker plant, which turned out to be
unnecessary and is now being prepared to run a data center.

That's interesting.  That's the Metcalf 605 MW plant.  I remember when
it was built.  It is a seriously large combined cycle plant with (I
think) two gas turbines.

> >...If the source is not available 25% of the time, the data center shuts down...
>
> It isn't clear to me why a data center cannot be partitioned down to a fraction of full capacity, so that some calculation continues even if most of it must be paused on still days.

Economics doesn't work that way.  Interrupting power to a data center
is not as serious as to an aluminum smelter which does massive damage,
but it might cost even more.

> Of all the power-intensive processes I can easily imagine, a data center might be the most intermittence-tolerant.

Work it out.  The consequences of a power interruption are serious.

> I can imagine Wyoming becoming an important site for data centers, because its wind is more reliable.

Doesn't work that way.  Wind can quit for a week.

Keith

> spike
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