from Hacker News

Data centers are building their own gas power plants in Texas

by 1659447091 on 6/6/25, 3:06 AM with 11 comments

• by metta2uall on 6/6/25, 5:04 AM

  We're stuffed because of a broken economic system where these companies can get away without paying for the externality costs of damaging our environment.. If only "Conservative" politicians would actually care about conserving our environment!

  And of course the costs do not affect everyone equally, especially in the short term - the people living in these areas tend to already be poor - like in Memphis were Musk's xAI seems to have turned on gas power without permits & controls.[0] Conveniently for xAI, Musk has also enthusiastically gutted the EPA.

  [0]: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/06/elon-musk-xai-memph...

• by bob1029 on 6/6/25, 6:45 AM

  I guess reliability isn't a factor anymore?

  The grid could lose several generators right now and no one would notice.

  You lose one or two private generators and it's gonna start getting tight quickly.

  From a risk management perspective, I don't think I'd be interested in a business that needs to operate an entire power grid vertical as a prerequisite to running some computers in an air conditioned building.

• by bobmcnamara on 6/6/25, 4:31 AM

  Hah! An old friend made a small fortune in Kazakhstan running a crypto farm from a de+recommissioned Soviet natural gas powerplant.