alt Hacker NewsThe cost of gas is completely irrelevant. In order to bring a new large load onto the grid, you have to coordinate with ERCOT, and they just made that process more tedious. Once you get your grid connection approved and built out, you have to source your own power anyway, and frankly there just isn't enough power on the market to realize the stated datacenter buildout goals in this country.
In short, you're going to have to build your own power plant anyway, so why bother with the grid? Gas is the cheapest, fastest zero-to-production choice for onsite power generation, and has been for a long time. Unless you're dealing with nuclear, the fuel cost just doesn't matter compared to the rest of the buildout, and gas wins because you can take off-the-shelf turbines and bolt them down.
You can only get away with it in places that don't care about environmental regulations, which are the places most likely to approve new buildout of gas infrastructure anyway. Nobody in the northeast is going to approve the creation of a brand new carcinogen factory.
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hopefully when the Ai bubble burst, all those new renewable plantals will be feeding the grid. and power will be the Aeron chairs of 2030.
> Gas is the cheapest, fastest zero-to-production choice for onsite power generation, and has been for a long time.
Is it, though? There's a ton of projects out there waiting to get their solar on the grid in west Texas, partnering with one of them and launching the project early while waiting on the interconnection queue, and adding enough batteries, gives a more robust solution right now without the SPOF nature of large single generators.
Add to that the long backorder list for gas turbines right now, with no end in sight, and I'm surprised that Microsoft would power this particular location with turbines because it's probably their best chance to do off-grid massive solar projects.
Massive off-grid solar is what China is choosing for some absolutely massive new industrial projects. Nuclear is a no-go because it takes so long to deploy, but solar + batteries are cheap COTS and available in abundance, unlike gas turbines.