Found this interesting . . . At 100 years old, Caterpillar increasingly finds growth in powering data centers | Fortune https://share.google/c7H8cVmhH6MTEFtgp
You have to laugh at this. The amount of emissions from data centres/ai hubs to fuel the modern urban lifestyle must be huge, yet you never hear a whisper about it. It is all the evil farmers or the evil miners fault.
With all the increase in population in Texas the state is running out of electricity. We are getting a micro nuclear plant in the area soon. Someone just put in two gas turbine generators in town and beefed up the lines and built a new substation. STNP has two of the largest reactors in the US each producing 1280 MW and are at full capacity. They both came on line in the late 80's. The positions there pay top dollar. They don't want a Homer Simpson at the controls.
Cat is big with Solar Turbines.
Grid can't handle the demands for them, so they run on generator power. My buddy that worked at one of the mid-Oregon centers told me the crazy amount of diesel they burned through a day; I wish I remembered the number. All for Cloud storage, the dirty C word trading, and LLM AI ******** that no one really wants. But the hype makes a lot of ******** money.
Yep new nuclear power plants being built to make ai bigfoot comedy videos.
Best use of AI, to date. Mr. Foot and his buddy, Fred the Yeti, have the vibe Boyz, drop that gas pump emoji if you made it this far,…….
I was in the columbia basin last year, saw a huge data center, lined with generators. Sitting beside the hydro power produced by the river. They don't just give those big genset's away either.
Our son is in charge of emergency power generation for a big data center. I believe he told me that one of their new centers has about 31 Cat emergency generators installed, at a cost of about one million each. The company is also talking about building a small nuclear gen plant at each of their new facilities, so they do not have to rely on the local power grid.
I'm still hopefully the whole AI industry is going to crash and burn, I think its another bubble with many similarities to the dot com bubble. If it does it'll likely cause another recession, but for societies sake I think it'll be worth it. The AI industry is a whole bunch of promises, speculation, and overvalued companies that are providing a service that most people don't need (if they are honest with themselves) or want. Not to mention the environmental impact, strain on the electric grid, loss of jobs, and the strain these data centers put on the residents around them.
Caterpillar bought Balderson Manfacturing in Wamego, Kansas in 1990. Balderson was a significant maker of snow plows and other attachments for graders and dozers. In 2024, Cat announced they would close the Balderson plant to move the jobs to Mexico. In May '25, Cat announced their division Solar Turbines would take over the Wamego site and maintain the existing workforce.
It is AI's dirty secret. It has increased power usage tremendously in the last few years.
Did you get a sack of potatoes while there.
Estimated increase in data center usage, just Texas, from 2,400mw in 2024, to 78,000mw by 2031. That's unsustainable in my mind, that kind of increase in demand in only 7 years. I worked on a 300mw coal energy plant expansion, and I think that took 4 years to build. There was a existing 195mw plant and they doubled it in size. If you had to start with a open field, today the permits might take that long.
Nope, had a niece get married, so just a short trip. Got to spend the night across the road from a feedlot, from what it smelled like.
It's either feedlots or spuds, so not surprised by any odors, it's the flies that can be bad at times. Most now are AI flies.
A Tx company, TA Infrastructure, announced they are going to lease a pad from Hilcorp in the Endicott field and connect to the Hilcorp power plant to run a ******* mine. Only 1.4 MW and it’s a four year pilot project. One of the advantages is cheap gas and easy cooling. Sounds like they have the permit and approvals from the State.
The artificial intelligence data centres are going to have huge power requirements .Microsoft has signed an agreement with Constellation to restart the Three Mile Island Nuclear plant to power a data centre.
Freaking power grid is inadequate for our current needs (no pun intended). I swear every winter they tell us to not plug in our vehicles all night and turn off space heaters because the grid is maxed out. And these clowns in government want us all in EV's in 5 years plus add all these data centers in on top of it? With the amount of BS, red tape and environmental and special interest groups to appease here in Canada we'd be lucky to see them even break ground on a new power plant by 2030. Assuming they started the process 5 years ago lol.
Big box.....tons of power to simply wiggle some electrons from 1 to 0 Not melting steel, making cement, nor stamping out parts. Just moving transistors from on to off.
We have to keep Instagram and TikTok running. That is a lot more important than melting steel or stamping parts . . .
It's not just the power grid. My town of 60k has been on boiled water orders from the city since July 5th. It has had an unbelievable impact on everyone held hostage by the city water system. I'm in the country with 3 different 300' deep wells so we are ok.
The data center game is quite wild its also similar to microchips in a way by the time a building is built and open for business the design is already outdated As for power I had one data center ready to break ground and then it went on hold for 12 months because the power company couldn't make delivery for 3 years the data center said who cares we will use generator power and get going until the tennet backed out because they would have had to pay massive taxed cause they would have exceeded there carbon emissions compliance and that is the only reason they backed out We are supposed to start another one that has been informed that the utility company will never be able to meet peak demand on and can expect to have a 70 percent shortage of power at peak demand and they are supposed to do natural gas generators to of ft set carbon taxes otherwise we will build a fuel farm there I sat in a meeting that we will probably be bidding micro reactor builds in the next 3 years to actually build one and be operating before 2030 we will see what happens
Toshiba wanted to put a micro reactor in Galena around the 2008 time frame. So close,… Galena Nuclear Power Plant - Wikipedia en.m.wikipedia.org Before that, a 20-megawatt SM-1A reactor was installed at Fort Greely in 1962 and ran until 72, when it became too expensive to operate. The plant provided steam heat in addition to electricity. I think it’s being decommissioned at this time. Presently, Eielson Air Force Base is getting a new 5MW unit from Oklo Inc.
My understanding is the most the power is used to cool the computers. The amount of HVAC units outside the data center I've seen is off the charts. There could be thousands, as they line the buildings on both sides every 20'.
That’s going to be the next rich job. Chiller mechanic. If you can work on chiller towers, you’re going to be making 200k a year.
Worlds first nuclear power plant, Craters of The Moon. trivia-Arco was the first town powered by. * Your Guide to Visiting Idaho’s Craters of the Moon - ILRA In central Idaho lies a stark and striking landscape that seems otherworldly. Vast fields of jagged, reddish-brown to deep black lava rocks stretch for miles, dotted by protruding cone-shaped hills, providing a staggering contrast against the surrounding sagebrush-swept, high-desert plains... ilra.org
IMO we'd be much better off without all this tech garbage. I'd much rather step back about 20-25 years in technology and stay there.
They need cooled because why ?
The server farms/ data centers throw off tons of heat. Got to keep them cool or they melt down. There's actually a small data center in my town underground. Its in a old underground rock quarry, they circulate the air, but the underground 55 degrees makes a big difference on the cooling costs.
No one mentions bit coin that use just as much or more power as these data centers and they use ton of water to keep these places cool too. Ground temperatures here of 42°F are perfect.
Exactly my thoughts. We've come to a point where the technology is benefiting the creator far more than the end user. There's only so many features/tech you can use on a car, appliance, phone, etc but big tech is desperate to keep jamming new stuff down the consumers throat.
Yea, exactly. Please explain why my stove needs a wi-fi connection.
I hate this stuff with a passion. The more computers they try and cram into things that don't need them the more I desire something simple. I've actually ditched a lot of this tech stuff the last few years.
Something like this with cable operated front loader and backhoe complete with laser on the console. *
I fully understand the question. Why ? the moving of electrons in silicon, is not perfect, and heat is the in-efficiency. Much like hysteris in transformers. Instead of staying with the same old thing and just making billions of them, try swimming upstream, and fix the problem.
Because you can, that's why. What other reason could one possibly need?
Had a furnace installed a while back. Told the HVAC tech I do not want a smart thermostat or anything that connects to wifi.
Give up your A/C, ride the homeless **** express public bus, and eat the bugs so that AI can consume more power in a second than you will your entire life.
I'd like to hear what @DMiller has to say about the small nuke plants since he was in the industry.
Small Modular Nuclear Reactors: Potential Benefits and Major Shortcomings
Back when I worked at the Cat dealer in the late 70's there was already talk from the factory rep about microprocessors on the way. Several of us in the shop asked why. He said "everybody is going to use electronics". That's why I just purchased a 2001 120H. Only one simple ECM.
Till that ECM becomes obsolete and is fried with a voltage spike.
You are correct sir. Cat wants nearly 4k for a reman unprogrammed one. If push came to shove I think a ingenious individual could by pass the dam thing.
I think small nuclear power plants are much more efficient and certainly more pleasing to the eye than ruining thousands of acres of precious land with dumb ass solar fields. Certainly better than the, never save or make a single dollar, wind power. Now I am on board, that every house that has decent sun exposure, making code that all the roofs have solar panels but technology needs to improve for snow and icing and roof longevity. Maybe self cleaning films or coatings and a wire grid to melt snow and ice. Thats as long as the grid is updated and able to handle the power. Texas, with their cobbled together private grid, needs a renovation to be sure.