Electricity Is Now Holding Back Growth Across the Global Economy (bloomberg.com) 75
Grid constraints that were once a hallmark of developing economies are now plaguing the world's richest nations, and new research from Bloomberg Economics finds that rising electricity system stress is directly hurting investment. The analysis examined all G20 countries and found that a one-standard-deviation increase in grid stress relative to a country's historical average lowers the investment share of GDP by around 0.33 percentage points -- a 1.5% to 2% hit to capital outlays.
The Netherlands is a case in point: 12,000 businesses are waiting for grid connections, congestion issues are expected to persist for a decade despite $9.4 billion in annual investments, and the country is already consuming as much electricity as was projected for 2030. ASML, the chip equipment maker whose fortunes can sway the Dutch economy, has no guarantee it will secure power for a new campus planned to employ 20,000 people.
Data centers are particularly affected. Google canceled plans near Berlin, a Frankfurt facility cannot expand until 2033, Microsoft has shifted investments from Ireland and the UK to the Nordics, and a Digital Realty Trust data center in Santa Clara that was applied for in 2019 may sit empty for years.
The Netherlands is a case in point: 12,000 businesses are waiting for grid connections, congestion issues are expected to persist for a decade despite $9.4 billion in annual investments, and the country is already consuming as much electricity as was projected for 2030. ASML, the chip equipment maker whose fortunes can sway the Dutch economy, has no guarantee it will secure power for a new campus planned to employ 20,000 people.
Data centers are particularly affected. Google canceled plans near Berlin, a Frankfurt facility cannot expand until 2033, Microsoft has shifted investments from Ireland and the UK to the Nordics, and a Digital Realty Trust data center in Santa Clara that was applied for in 2019 may sit empty for years.
Isn't it mostly just AI data centers? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Isn't it mostly just AI data centers? (Score:5, Informative)
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First, you don't live in the US so how can you say this? Secondly, that's why they are called 'problems' and you solve them. Sheesh.
Not in the US you don't. You blame them on the opposition, or immigrants, or a particular ethnic group, while acting to make the problem even worse.
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Different country, similar story. They needed money so they took it from there, and now they complain.
Entirely predictable, nothing to do with AI datacenters.
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It's someone else masquerading as rsilvergun. Some random anonymous jackass who seems to think they're doing something other than wasting time and making a pointless mess.
Heh, that makes more sense
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And that's not meaningful growth. It doesn't make more stuff or more services or make life better for anyone it just replaces jobs.
I use a coding assistant all the time now. I get far more done (and yes, I review the code before committing). That makes the labor cost of my software less. Assuming the token cost doesn't go up by much, that makes my software cheaper, which means either the products it gets embedded in are cheaper and/or I can embed software in more things.
No doubt there are many AI apps which won't pan out: just ask my wife how much she likes AI customer service desks. But we'll figure that out and those will disappear.
T
Great...let's pile on.... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Well I have said it many times but right (Score:4, Funny)
"Wing trolls always mod me down."
Don't know who "wing trolls" are but they get something right.
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Same sad asshole making the same sad remarks. Don't like it? Move to Russia.
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Re: Great...let's pile on.... (Score:2)
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We know this argument is total bad faith bullshit because the same folks making it also hate and refuse to support forms of public transport or really anything that would reduce car dependency. AKA "my conservative media diet has convinced me a gasoline burning engine must be central to my personal and political self definition"
Efficiency? Externalities? Economics? No, all is irrelevant!! Culture war all the time! All things must be subsumed into the culture war!
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support forms of public transport
It's often cheaper to move the power to where it's needed than to move the workers to where the power is generated.
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Do you live in a city?
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Just make your arguments for if I do and if I don't.
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It would've taken less words to prove my assumptions about conservatives, their media diet and their generally selfish and myopic outlook on society so just say "you are 100% correct"
Exemplary stuff, you couldn't have made my case better and confirmed my position.
If I didn't know better I'd think this was satire it's so on the nose.
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Not only do you both miss the point I made fucking entirely but you get the actual facts wrong on top of that.
Here's a hint it wasn't about anyone personal situation it was about the political attitudes. Myopic to the point of sociopathy.
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It's the powerful elite who control the media and use it to marionette people like you into wasting your energy
Who did you vote for before I take any accusations that I am marionette by the elites because those sideways people put in power the most elite corrupted admin in my lifetime, there are like over 10 billionaires in this admin.
Then you can tell me how I can look up while the people sideways to me keep punching me in the dick every-time I do. I gotta stop that first before I can "look up".
Kamala put the barest suggestion of a wealth tax and elites went into overdrive to get folks like you to do the very thin
Too bad we can't just put something on the roof (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Too bad we can't just put something on the roof (Score:5, Interesting)
That would generate our own power, at least during the day.
Solar certainly has a place, but distributed solar creates its own grid issues and I doubt could, in the near term, solve issues with demand constraints or grid constraints. I looked into solar but the ROI simply was not there for my use case.
The challenge is a lot of facilities, such as data centers want a lot of power that is basically uninterruptible, and build them in places where the infrastructure to get the power to them doesn't exist. So you have 2 NIMBY problems, building a plant and running lines to the site.
Utility planning also didn't take into account the explosion of demand due to data centers, mainly because it is a relatively new phenomena. They are also rightly concerned if the what's driving the demand for data centers goes awaay and demand drops as data centers close, whose footing the bill for the now not needed lines and power plants?
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I looked into solar but the ROI simply was not there for my use case.
I just installed solar + battery on my house (full commission is this afternoon, meaning I'll be able to net meter against the grid). As things stand now, the ROI is there, but the payback period is a bit long (~10 years), but that's only because my electricity is pretty cheap ($0.12/kWh is the average price here; I'm on a TOU plan where I pay $0.28 on-peak (6-10pm weekdays) and $0.06/kWh off-peak). Given the grid challenges I think it's reasonable to expect prices to go up and knock a couple of years off
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I guess you could go semi off-grid... i.e. turn the master breaker off at the meter most of the time. My installer says that if you haven't used any power from the grid in 30 days, the power company will contact you to find out what's up, and if you haven't used any in 60 days they will definitely contact you. Of course, you'll still have to pay the basic connection fees even if you avoid actually using a non-trivial amount of their power.
My power company already reduced the credit from $0.09/kWh to $0.
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A few comments, in reverse order.
First, code violations are civil, not criminal, in every jurisdiction I've ever heard of. What state are you in? The only way they become criminal is if you refuse to comply for long enough that a judge finds you in criminal contempt. In this case, I'd be shocked (even assuming shutting off the emergency disconnect would get you a citation, which seems unlikely, see below) that the first ticket would simply be an order to turn it back on. From there if you refused to com
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Silicon prices never fully recovered from COVID, so companies will want to run their compute 24/7 to recoup the upfront cost. This is unfortunately true for most industrial processes. For example, there were experiments for using sunlight concentrated with mirrors as an industrial heat source, but it's just not economical to only run your expensive facility when the sun is shining.
Re:Too bad we can't just put something on the roof (Score:5, Insightful)
Acres and acres of flat roofs and parking lots doing nothing but absorbing energy and wasting it. We have devices that passively generate power from sunlight. Sounds like science fiction when you think about it.
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That would generate our own power, at least during the day.
That is fine for residential, which doesn't require much energy density. It doesn't take much of a business before you don't have enough area to site all the panels.
That said, I've never been convinced residential rooftop solar is the most economical way to generate electricity. I have to believe mega farms in a desert are more cost effective. I just look around my neighborhood at all the crazy angles people point their panels and just shake my head. Those panels can't possibly be producing at their peak ca
Re: Too bad we can't just put something on the roo (Score:2)
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Thanks. That's a very interesting slide deck.
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Residential rooftop solar is not, and cannot ever be, the most economical way to generate electricity. But why does it have to be? Seems like it's a point, but also a non-sequitur. Rooftop solar only needs to have a positive ROI to make sense. Does not need to be the most economical.
Is your car / truck the MOST economical way to get around? Probably not. Mine isn't. And that's OK. Works for me, right now.
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Residential rooftop solar is not, and cannot ever be, the most economical way to generate electricity. But why does it have to be? Seems like it's a point, but also a non-sequitur. Rooftop solar only needs to have a positive ROI to make sense. Does not need to be the most economical.
Is your car / truck the MOST economical way to get around? Probably not. Mine isn't. And that's OK. Works for me, right now.
Turns out this is a moot point. If you look at the slide deck, the vast majority of solar generation is utility-scale deployments. Residential is, IIRC, about 20% of new capacity.
You are correct if there's ample money to invest and no urgency to achieve a difficult result. Then you don't care how efficient your investment is. But since we're taking about not having enough electricity, how we're spending our investment dollars matters. At a macro level we could get substantially more capacity if we buy at ut
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That would generate our own power, at least during the day.
Since the Netherlands is quoted, it's worth noting that your idea isn't unique or new. In fact there literally an option to fast track grid connections to any business willing to accept "non-firm" connections, i.e. connections that allow remote load shedding to a certain degree, i.e. if you install a certain amount of solar + battery and load balance in a way that they can turn your power off during peak you get fast tracked.
It's literally the free market pushing solar and batteries as a solution.
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Unchecked greed is being checked by reality.
News at ten.
Electrical Production (Score:2)
is now holding back AI datacenter growth which is starving standard buisness growth.
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If AI is not in a bubble, I'll eat a live toad on live Youtube.
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But AI can't recreate the physical sensation of me ramming that toad up your...
Multiple problems (Score:2)
Investor owned utilities want profit, not construction expense
Endless rules and bureaucracy makes building stuff nearly impossible
NIMBYs file endless lawsuits
There are few companies that make the equipment and they are booked for years in advance
It's inherently expensive and difficult to do
Re:Multiple problems (Score:5, Interesting)
Investor owned utilities want profit, not construction expense
True. I used to work for one of those. They were always trying to figure out how to offload maintenance and construction onto subcontractors. And just sit around, read meters and collect bills. It turns out that the meter-reading (which they had also sub'ed out) is easy to do. And the market took note of that and cut their ROI to the bone. They were de-listed from the stock market and went private as a subsidiary of an investment fund. Which is principally held by the construction companies doing their heavy lifting. And making big bucks doing so.
It turns out that capital markets are pretty good at spotting situations where the marginal cost of a product is low or zero. And then cutting the fair PE ratio to match. Except for where it will take a few years to figure the market and products out (AI for example). And then the salesmen drop that segment like a no longer hot potato and spin up a new scam.
It turns out that there is always money to be made as a reward for continuting real efforts. It's just not the sexiest part of the economy.
I know ... (Score:3)
Now? You mean ALWAYS (Score:5, Insightful)
Energy has always been the main constraint on economies. The growth of our economies has generally been the growth of our energy sources. At first it was wood, then coal, then natural gas, etc. etc. etc.
From the day Edison and Tesla started to electrify the world, electricity has been the main constraint of economic growth.
It will continue to be so until we get some new, Star Trek energy source. (Off topic but.... Star Trek because Star Wars is really Wizards in space, while Star Trek is Science Fiction. If your heroes use swords to save the day, that is fantasy. If they ask the Engineer - whether he is missing a finger from WW II or was blind from birth - that is Science to the rescue!)
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OT again, but "Star Wars is really Wizards in space, while Star Trek is Science Fiction" will be used to buttress my next debate of "astrology vs astronomy".
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This isn't your daddie's constraint. In many cases it's literally a case of "you can't build here we don't have power", and we're not talking about today vs 3 months from now, we're literally talking potentially years.
Parts of the world (e.g. the countries in question) are at the point where the electricity company is the the one who is holding up something as basic as simple housing construction.
No we definitely haven't always been in this situation. We may have been for massive mega loads like new mines,
And this is not linked to... (Score:2)
... massive build outs of datacenters?
Moving to nordic countries? (Score:2)
Long term move to high insolation regions? (Score:2)
I wonder if this will drive a move over the long term to regions with lots of sun. Look at the dramatic growth in solar in Pakistan and across Africa, both the Levant and sub-Saharan. If I were Morocco etc, rather than trying to pull off a gigantic expensive engineering project involving running HVDC to Europe, I’d tout myself to the FAANGs as a location for cheap compute. Bury the DCs in the desert, stick solar and battery up at a large scale, and run comparatively cheap data cables. Not the low late
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I wonder if this will drive a move over the long term to regions with lots of sun.
Regions with lots of sun necessitate lots of extra cooling, which somewhat negates the advantages of all that sun. And the tradeoff will only get worse as average temperatures continue to increase as a result of AGW.
We keep trying to eat our cake and have it too, when the real solution is to eat a lot less cake. But we won't do that, so we're fucked.