What is it that makes gas power plants so much more attractive than renewable energy? From what I heard, it's a bit easier to build them very fast and they reliably produce energy on demand (as long as gas is available of course). But I imaging one could replicate this using solar/wind and storage units.
I could imagine that the challenge is that that having enough solar panels for a few gigawatts of consumption is hard to do on-site, so one needs to connect the data center to the grid, which, in turn, complicates matters and transformators are scarce right now.
Is this about right? I do hope that we find a way to do this more sustainably. AI doesn't solve climate change in the next few years, so clean energy isn't irrelevant.
My understanding is that you can turn gas plants on and off very quickly, and they can run at any time of day. That makes them excellent suppliers for peak demand. For much of the year, the evening peak occurs when the sun is not shining and the winds have died down, so renewables are not viable.
Renewables can be combined with storage technologies such as batteries, so the syllogism "no generation during Dunkelflaute, but need reliablye generation -> renewables not viable" is too simple. My question is about whether renewables with storage technologies are a viable replacement for the gas power plants.
There are many facets of “viability”: technical, economic, political. There is obviously some reason why new gas plants are being built instead of renewables with storage.
Yes, and I'm still interested in better understanding that reason. My previous response just noted that the explanation you gave seemed overly simplistic to me in that it did not address that renewable energy can be stored, making it less volatile.
I live near one of the world’s largest grid scale battery facilities. It was in the news last year for catching fire and filling the air with lithium. [0] So I’m aware of the technology’s existence. But I also know that it’s still a very young technology, with battery chemistry constantly improving. There are also inherent losses going to and from AC power, which is what the grid operates on and which most plants produce.
[0] https://www.readymontereycounty.org/emergency/2025-moss-land...
I think you overestimate the currently available storage technologies. Batteries are very limited in capacity and super expensive in large scale. Hydrogen or synthetic methane might work, but those are gases, if you were opposed to them.
> My question is about whether renewables with storage technologies are a viable replacement for the gas power plants.
I'm guessing probably not. If it was truly the no-brainer "cheap AND fast AND better" option everyone thinks it is, data centers would be rolling out renewables right now. They're not so dumb that they'd pass up on a superior, cheaper solution just because.
Actually I’m not so sure about that. The turning on and off quickly part.
Because in my country (in Asia) there’s surplus energy from renewables (solar, wind) during the daytime, so much so that they’re having to shut things down because the grid can’t handle it (yet).
However at night we need power from traditional sources (coal, basically. We do have hydroelectric and nuclear power also, but that’s not sufficient).
They cannot shut down the coal plants during the day because apparently turning it back on is a tricky time consuming process.
They cannot run the coal plants at reduced capacity because that reduces the efficiency and increases the wear and tear of the equipment.
And the renewables also brought up another problem in that the power that comes is not steady (unlike the traditional sources).
All that is putting pressure on the grid.
The long term solution is to upgrade the grid to handle all this. And the government is working on it (I think). But that’ll take time to do. At least a decade.
Uhh, I don’t know much more technical details about all this. Maybe more knowledgeable members can contribute.
Coal is different. Natural gas is commonly used for peaker plants that provide electricity only when needed. They’re a better fit for using along with other intermittent sources.
Yes, coal takes very long to start up. Natural gas is very quick.
You can build gas power plants on site at your data center and don’t have to wait for the grid to be upgraded. In the long run gas will be replaced by cheaper renewables
As far as I understand, building a large solar farm is still considerably _faster_ than gas turbine plant.
It is hard to operate renewables 24/7. At night and winter, you need a big array of generators and LED lights to shine on solars. Very inefficient.
Or for every solar you need a generator as a backup!
I asked whether solar/wind in combination with storage technologies, including but not limited to batteries, was able to reliably power a data center.
Really, no! You were going to dump peak solar/wimd energy into grid, and play stupid why "backward" public utilities need gas to do stabilisation!
Batteries
Very fast and reliable? Sold!