A very important topic, well framed. This odd foundational “assumption” that most data centers truly need extreme reliability and constant operations is absurd to me. Some? Sure. But “need” is often applied where “want” is more appropriate. And we simply don’t have the luxury.

#energysky

I’ve been surprised at how cold the dev community has gone on CAISO. There are fine reasons to steer clear - 1. Queue length, 2. Deliverability, 3 solar saturation, 4. PUCs recent decisions - but we’ve overcorrected. There are durable fundamentals. BESS penetration is spectacular and not slowing.

Which I personally don’t find less motivating, as the avoidance of other’s severe suffering is, maybe counterintuitively, almost more poignant than the notion of preserving indefinite runway for a large earth population. But it is sure depressing to watch the task turn Sisyphean on your monitor.

Unfortunately the math became impossible in early Nov - at least according to the NorESM, and MPIESM - with est. scalar shifts applied to US patterns and 2nd deg. effects thereof. It is now a question of how many generations have a decent quality of life and what that life looks like.

Sure, probably. But we aren’t competitive here even absent dumping. Had our window, subsidized oil instead. Now, fruitlessly imposing tariffs costs America too dearly by slowing transition to clean energy, and jobs (90%+ of American solar jobs are related to developing/building/operating plants)🔌💡

There are variations of this, some stale, some half relevant. A tailored look is not terribly difficult but requires making a couple dozen assumptions that are ripe for debate. People freeze up at such junctures. Can you elucidate “different techs ability to shift supply chains”?

Not that we aren’t making great strides with IRA Catalyzed domestic manufacturing, but we’re still more than an order of magnitude short. Frankly our window to avoid heavy import reliance closed when we skimped RD support in the 2000s. It’s now a matter of degrees. Our degree presently sucks.

Did you catch any chatter about sliding domestic content requirement up a notch with PWA requirements for 30%? I have this fear that the 18 letter-writing republicans aren’t sufficiently informed to understand that’s little different than axing it, and are being pushed to support that compromise.