By Jo Nova
The insatiable hunger for electricity
The world is about to flip from an energy diet to an electrical boom. Look at Texas.
Here in Australia our top Blob Scientists tell us it will take 15 years to build one nuclear plant. But in Texas, which has two nuclear plants already, the AI revolution is beating down the door, and it’s saying “Feed me 30 plants for breakfast ” — or at least by 2030. It’s like a different planet.
There are already 340 datacentres in Texas which use 8GW of power, but new projects are so large, they are starting to ask for a whole gigawatt up front. And the sum total of requests for new electrical supply add up to 99 gigawatts — most of which have materialized in the last year. The new level of demand is so big, the grid managers are starting to worry that single new industrial loads are large enough to threaten the grid.
We’re talking of a seismic shift:
The ERCOT grid peak load last summer was 86 gigawatts. The new peak demand by 2030 is expected to be 75% bigger. It may not all be nuclear, ERCOT did ask for “the equivalent” of 30 new nuclear plants. But it will be big and fast.
Texas has 31 million people. Australia has 26 million (plus a million foreign uni students). We’re performing a national pantomime over whether it’s realistic to build a few nuclear plants and a couple of SMR’s, as if we’re plotting to build the first colony on Venus. Meanwhile Texas is leading the revolution.
Texas Needs Equivalent of 30 Reactors to Meet Data Center Power Demand
Financial Post
“We’ve never existed in a place where large industrial loads can really impact the reliability of the grid, and now we are stepping into that world.”
[Bloomberg]— Demand on the Texas power grid is expected to expand so immensely that it would take the equivalent of adding 30 nuclear plants’ worth of electricity by 2030 to meet the needs.
That’s according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the grid. The forecast is based on the addition of new data centers needed to power artificial intelligence. And it’s raising concerns about whether infrastructure in the state will be able to expand fast enough — and at what cost.
Individual projects are already starting to request 1 gigawatt of power and they pose new risks to maintaining a stable grid, said Agee Springer, Ercot’s senior manager of grid interconnections. A gigawatt is typically enough to power 250,000 homes in Texas.
Ercot said it’s gotten requests equal to 99 gigawatts for new connections to the grid from big power users, including data centers, bitcoin miners and hydrogen producers, according to an internal grid presentation Thursday. That’s up from 40.8 gigawatts last March.
There’s a big question as to whether infrastructure can be built fast enough because of supply chain issues, resulting in long wait times for things like big turbines to produce electricity and other key equipment such as transformers. Another critical issues is who is going to pay for all of this build out.
One company is already planning to build 30 micronuclear plants. Another wants to develop molten salt reactors.
None of the AI teams are begging for wind or solar power. If Australia were to build new coal plants, or new nuclear plants with spare capacity, Big AI would be here in a flash. The La Trobe Valley could become a world leading AI centre if the government was willing to keep using the 300 years of cheap brown coal there. At 3 cents a kilowatt hour wholesale, it’s still the cheapest electricity on the planet.
Do we want to be the coal and iron mine at the edge of the world, or would we like to ride the revolution?
Re-Newables should be able to handle this.
No worries.
/sarc
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No need for /sarc.
Ruinables can handle the load. You just have to accept a lower level of performance.
Something to ponder as you walk around your 15 minute city looking for your next meal, (as it scurries down a drain).
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They Fought The Carbon And The … Carbon Won
Short post. A graph that some people will prefer you ignore.
That’s it. That’s the whole post.
Rock on!
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Thanks again Jo for trying to wake us up, but unfortunately the Labor , Greens, Teals loonies want to destroy Eastern Australia to build toxic, unreliables like W & S and keep re-building every 15 to 20 years.
Bloomberg tells us this would cost us trillions of $ and all wasted forever and zero change to our climate by 2050 or 2100 or ….?
If this isn’t barking mad, then what is it?
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>If this isn’t barking mad, then what is it?
Yes it is barking mad, and utterly so, until you adjust your premise.
If the objective is to destroy what we have and what our parents and grandparents have built, to the point we have lost and we invite new owner/managers in to please run the show, because as part of our self-destruction we’ve made noble efforts to leave plenty of our wealth buried for the benefit of our new overlords, then it doesn’t seem quite so staggeringly bonkers. Relax, everything is under control. But not under our control.
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It is not just Eastern Australia, Western Australia may be beyond recall too.
Perth is fed power from Collie (an old & shakey coal fed power plant, 200k south).
Perth gets a large share of its potable water from desalination, powered from Collie.
Er….
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Umm, Bluewaters is Australia’s most modern coal power station, and delivers up to 50% of the WA SWIS grid power. Not that “old and shaky”.
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These are not mutually exclusive. Do both.
I would never propose moving out of coal and iron ore to focus on AI. I believe AI is still in the fad stage. Not much different to solar power, BEVs and lithium batteries a decade or two back. Each of these technologies have found an economic niche but not the game changers that they were supposed to achieve.
The place to be now is developing a nuclear power capability while building more coal fired plants in the Latrobe Valley that will power Australia for the next 50 years. Export the high rank coal while burning the lignite here in state of the art power plants.
But Blackout has already locked taxpayers into footing the bill for 8GWh of batteries, a major new pump hydro in addition to Snowy 2 and 4GW of new solar and wind. The tenders have been accepted so the funding guarantees locked in. Dutton needs a plan to unravel all of that.
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I’d much prefer that we took that coal and that iron ore and produced the steel for the world. All rolled into completed structural sections and forged into the spanners and hammers. I’d also prefer the bauxite to be refined to the aluminium alloys that the world demands, casting and cold drawing the sections and plate ready for our industrial centres to make into the goods the world demand.
Instead…. we’re just the ones who dig the holes in the ground and ship the goods to others so that we can buy them back at greatly inflated prices.
There’s no value adding in Oz. It’s too damned expensive to even contemplate now.
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Mr. Ian: All you need is a man like Andrew Carnegie, and a government that stays out of his way. I bet AU is well-stocked with the first, if you had the second part.
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Someone once told me it’s to do with our tax structure, not sure how that works, much less tax on raw materials.
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The last paragraph is a key example of the intractable mess created by our political timidity. By that I mean the Aus voting patterns.
With an Elbow minority government, the Greens/Teals holding the lower house balance and the Greens with the balance in the Senate, devolution seems assured.
A Dutton minority government will likely be no better off, as the small raggedy parties such as Hanson’s seem always to suffer people who defect once elected. Even wet Liberals would be sufficient to cause deadlock.
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Why is AI so important to build lots of power production for?
Better to spend the $$$ into the Lunar and Mars expeditions instead.
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>Why is AI so important
Good question, but likewise why are Mars and Lunar so important for us?
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It continues what we do naturally, explore and expand our horizons the fall out of this is improved medicine, food preservation, new or improved technology and more.
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Mark Mills in this short 26 minute video tries to explain what is required to build data centres in the immediate future.
This is from 2 months ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohzqrECEjYY&t=12s
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What is the AUKUS Partnership
https://www.ussc.edu.au/explainer-what-is-the-aukus-partnership
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Dutton Plan Nuclear
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Dennis, you could change a few words in that Dutton plan statement and it would ably describe a plan based on building new HELE type coal plants, without nuclear. The last 4 points already describes our present grid if current assets were just retained and upgraded.
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I googled dutton “dutton how much renewable energy”.
Amazing results!
All results on 1st page is from pro renewable media, you can guess what their commentary is.
Goodle state that google is not biased.
I say google is full of BS!
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PS…
DuckDuckGo isn’t much better
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Dutton Plan
https://www.australianeedsnuclear.org.au
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Never forget that all of the panic is because co2 now makes up about 0.014% MORE of our atmosphere than it did in 1800 and is still a tiny trace gas.
It was about 0.028% before the IR and today it’s about 0.042% and Nitrogen is about 78% , Oxygen is about 21% and Argon is about 0.9% =99.9%.
So water vapour, co2, methane, nitrous oxide etc make up the last 0.1%. BUT W V is much higher in the tropics and very little at the poles.
https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=1ARR%2fZp0&id=7A5109DF33BAD9706BC81304910827E76B067113&thid=OIP.1ARR_Zp06PMaRNf9mgkXlwHaH0&mediaurl=https%3a%2f%2fthumbs.dreamstime.com%2fz%2fcomposition-air-vector-illustration-gas-structure-educational-scheme-separated-pie-percentage-parts-nitrogen-oxygen-carbon-184419510.jpg&exph=1690&expw=1600&q=gases+in+the+atmosphere+pie+chart&simid=608043245591929709&FORM=IRPRST&ck=CE41FF00879A7EFE2D41EA0791A180B1&selectedIndex=0&itb=0&idpp=overlayview&ajaxhist=0&ajaxserp=0
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Let us assume the numbers of what is needed are accurate, then none of this will ever be built. Such numbers are so expensive that the profits from such data centers simply will not be able to cover it.
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Here’s the proof from Dr Rosling’s BBC video that we owe everything to FF energy today when the UK started the IR about 200 + years ago.
All that extra wealth and health in just the last 0.1% of Human history and all told in under 5 minutes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo&t=11s
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The Al-bozo Government wants to promote AI in Australia but are too clueless to understand that it doesn’t run on wind, solar or Unicorn flatulence.
It needs real coal, gas, nuclear or real hydro (not SH2).
https://www.minister.industry.gov.au/ministers/husic/media-releases/australian-first-ai-plan-boost-capability
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AI is one of the principal weapons of the Left to control the flow of information and to promote propaganda, such as through biased Goolag search results and to do censorship on Leftist platforms like Farcebook and YouTube (which have become slightly less censorious since TRUMP was inaugurated as he threatened them with sanctions if they didn’t stop censoring and banning conservatives).
It’s interesting that this weapon of the Left can’t use the power systems so beloved of the Left like wind, solar and Unicorn flatulence.
It needs real coal, gas, nuclear or hydro power or they can’t control us.
Oh well, just another case of Leftist hypocrisy and Doublethink (the acceptance of contrary opinions or beliefs at the same time, especially as a result of political indoctrination).
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Back in the day, people involved with computers knew the concept of GIGO. Garbage In, Garbage Out.
Now, many people, including so-called professionals like scientists, engineers, lawyers, doctors etc. actually believe what AI tells them. It must be so much worse with your typical low information Green Labor Teal voter (i.e. people who may vote yet are generally poorly informed about issues according to Wiki definition).
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I wonder whether any of the data centre promotors has heard of a Carrington Event.
And the nuclear push becomes all the more urgent when 300 years of Latrobe Valley coal faces a factor of 10 in increased electricity demand and becomes a 30 year reserve.
Oh well as long as Australia heads away from anything which requires large amounts of energy or electronic circuitry…
… come the apocalypse the nation will become a superpower.
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I mentioned it in my article on Radiation and Electronics.
https://www.siliconchip.com.au/Issue/2019/July/Radiation+Hardening
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Or a manmade EMP event.
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Australia is nowheresville. And one regrets greatly that a change of government in May won’t change that fact. All Australian political parties likely to influence the outcome of the next federal election support net-zero unequivocally. The recent kerfuffle regarding Chinese naval vessels only deepens the reality of this dismal, ever more impoverished future.
Our country has alternatives but will not accord them the least consideration. The flatulent never-Trump reactions in Australian media to recent events in the Oval Office make that very clear. Energy will become ever more expensive and unreliable and life riddled with illness. Censorship rampant. And they’ll still demand we vote for them.
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While the demand for electricity is only increasing everywhere, in Western Australia the Labor state government and it’s government owned Power company, Synergy, is arrogantly going ahead with the permanent closure in April 2025 of Muja 6 220MW coal fired generator, 1 of only 6 coal units left in the western grid system even though it is running currently and has been providing the growing population with reliable power all summer after the government made a hasty adjustment to it original closure date of Oct 2024.
While some mouth breathing local Labor voters voice their concerns of 3 eyed fish inhabiting the local rivers if a Liberal government get their way of building a Nuclear plant in the Collie area where the 3 different Coal fired stations are located, but the same locals aren’t concerned of imminent power blackouts, electricity shortages or job losses with the proposed closure of all 1400MW worth of coal fired generation in the next 4 years with nothing but a few batteries, more useless wind turbines and rooftop solar installations to replace these dispatchable power generators.
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Collie is a Labor stronghold, last place to consider gaining approval for a nuclear power station. Only reason to build one there would be the existing line infrastructure.
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Which is a pretty good reason, plus a Lib govt building it there doesnt lose votes.
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Wait up, Minister Boofhead said that nuclear is a joke. Surely, he can’t be wrong, can he?
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Consider this:
Given the huge regulatory and political hurdles to build nuclear in Australia, plus the general backwards “can’t do” attitude, I can’t see how it will be ever built, especially as “experts” say it will take a ridiculous 15 years, even if it could be done.
Then consider that the United States under TRUMP will be experiencing a huge economic boom which will require vast amounts of inexpensive and reliable energy.
Most of the world’s resources to build proper coal, gas and nuclear power stations will be tied up in America, and also probably China and India.
Australia (and the rest of the woke world) will only be able to build pitiful solar and wind which will be sufficient as we continue to decline to second or third world status.
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BTW here again is the global primary energy consumption growth since 1800 and note the big increase in FFs since Dr Hansen’s Washington DC BS speech in 1988.
You can isolate any energy choice with your mouse and again note the biro width lines showing toxic, unreliable + clueless W & S.
Of course this has wasted tens of TRILLIONs of OECD countries’ $ since 1990 and TRILLIONs more to come if we keep voting for barking mad left wing loonies. See OWI Data link.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-primary-energy
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You want to talk about AI revolution, you have come to the right place!
Ex-Googler Schmidt warns US: Try an AI ‘Manhattan Project’ and get MAIM’d
Schmidt is one of three co-authors of a paper that likens artificial intelligence to nuclear weapons during the Cold War, and warns that the race to develop increasingly sophisticated AIs could disrupt the global balance of power and raise the odds of great power conflict.
Any state that succeeds in producing a superior AI poses a direct threat to the survival of its peers, and the paper authors assert that states seeking to secure their own survival will be forced to sabotage such destabilizing AI projects for deterrence. This might take the form of covert operations to degrade training runs to outright physical damage disabling AI infrastructure.
https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2025/03/06/schmidt_ai_superintelligence/
Power for data centres maybe, but AI is making spectacular leaps forward as I said it would, not decades away.
A mere few months ago machine task training took 400 hours. Today, it takes 1.5 hours, literally, as the concept of training and datasets become increasingly irrelevant and old school.
Remember the old petri dish brain cells playing “Pong” news from 2021?
Things have come a long way.
SBI – Synthetic Biological Intelligence – is here and will be the future as it tramples on “AI” chatbots and their ilk.
Vertical Labs CL1, for those interested.
The human brain consumes about 20 watts, so AI has a long way to go, with the current level of advancement, but with self improvement (AI self evolution) that will be rapid.
Cyborg AI – a fusion of the biologic and technological – was always inevitable and the the best way to true SBI, and with that comes very low power needs.
Grok claims AI sentience existed years ago, but Martin Armstrong says AI will never achieve sentience or consciousness (there’s a lot of overlap), and I completely disagree with him on that.
I have no doubt it will.
Just as a 5 Mega byte hard drive was the size of a fridge/freezer and weighed 1 ton in the 1950’s, cost $32,000 a month to lease one (!!!) as they weren’t for sale and needed a forklift to move it, and a 512 Gigabyte thumb drive weighs 10 grams and costs $50 today. Over 100,000 times the storage capacity, weighs 100,000th as much and virtually free. Thumbdrive power consumption is a few watts at most.
That’s how far we’ve come in 60 years, and with AI self evolving and making scientific breakthroughs way faster than humans dreamed of, decades will happen in months.
Giant power plants? Pppfff…
White elephant sale anyone?
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From Plimer’s A Short History of Planet Earth – p. 226
What we see and measure as changes to the earth in our own lifetime constitute just one frame in the movie of the history of the earth. If we try to understand the whole movie by looking at just one frame, conclusions are meaningless. Yet, this view of the planet pervades in the modern world.
While planet earth is around 4.5 billion years old, it is only during the last 2.5 million years (the Pleistocene and Holocene Epochs) that the continents moved into their current positions and ocean current patterns that we recognise today evolved and stabilised. This is the “modern” blueprint for our current climate, the main controller being the ocean. These “modern” Epochs were marked by repeated glacial events, cycling between cold, dry full glacial conditions and warmer, wetter interglacial conditions. The planet is now 8,000 years into an interglacial, with thousands of years before an inevitable relapse into glacial conditions. So humanity has quite a long period to sort out its climate quandary.
The transition to nuclear power generation is inevitable – maybe not tomorrow but in a century or so. Fossil-fuelled power generation is an essential part of this transition. Fossil fuel resources will eventually decline and become too valuable to waste on just burning it, so an aim towards net zero by 2150 is a much more sensible strategy. The ocean will take care of the excess atmospheric CO2, as it has done for millions of years. The oceans will not “boil” and there will not be a “hothouse earth” as long as the circum-Antarctic current keeps flowing, as it has done for the last 30 million years.
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BTW this is probably a more accurate composition of our atmosphere.
Nitrogen- 78.08%
Oxygen – 20.95%
Argon – 0.93%
All other trace gases including co2 = 0.04%.
https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=AZmJNLrc&id=3EE64EA62C5FDC5066A952431B11EB5D238610F3&thid=OIP.AZmJNLrcZk66xuxPN21q5gHaHa&mediaurl=https%3A%2F%2Fthumbs.dreamstime.com%2Fb%2Fair-composition-bar-graph-178248904.jpg&exph=800&expw=800&q=gases+in+the+atmosphere+pie+chart&simid=608011437112259098&form=IRPRST&ck=E072E10B0A374F775625E0B0C7582967&selectedindex=4&itb=0&ajaxhist=0&ajaxserp=0&pivotparams=insightsToken%3Dccid_1ARR%252FZp0*cp_CE41FF00879A7EFE2D41EA0791A180B1*mid_7A5109DF33BAD9706BC81304910827E76B067113*simid_608043245591929709*thid_OIP.1ARR!_Zp06PMaRNf9mgkXlwHaH0&vt=0&sim=11&iss=VSI
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The benefits of past revolutions, steam, oil etc are clear and unequivocal although there must have been many doubters at the time.
Is this AI revolution an expensive, hungry indulgence or will it change the world? Mark me as a doubter but apart from casting a vote occasionally I have no input.
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There are numerous examples world-wide of new, innovative developments in nuclear generation, large-scale and small modular, that Labor politicians and their staffs could research except for their blind faith in “green hydrogen”, solar panels, wind turbines and batteries. Nowhere are there commitments by the developers of turbines, solar and batteries to the dismantling of their installations once they reach the end of their relatively-short productive lives. Besides, wind scarcity events, rain and nighttimes require back-up to ensure power is available around the clock. How are renewables faring in south-east Queensland and north-eastern NSW over the past day or two? And won’t the same apply of the next few days? Get real!
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