Austin Energy absolutely should partner with third parties to help their customers get demand side solutions they want and need. I don't see a lot of progress on that. The next General Manager hire is going to be extremely important.
It’s good to see that they are at least starting to question the load growth prospects. During the boom around 2000, warehouse owners overbuilt the number of data center conversions by a significant amount, the revenue per sqft compared to plain warehouse space is considerable and there were a lot of companies hoping to cash in that never leased the space. Is there a profit in AI or is it a boom that’s going to be followed by a big bust and if the grid and generators get over built to meet the demand that might not be there the consumers will get stuck with the bill.
Great work covering this session, Doug. Let's hope for similarly good (less bad?) outcomes for federal energy policy.
Is there any hope that places like Austin (i.e. Austin Energy) will be able to have VPP options, like Base Power, Tesla VPP, etc?
Austin Energy absolutely should partner with third parties to help their customers get demand side solutions they want and need. I don't see a lot of progress on that. The next General Manager hire is going to be extremely important.
It’s good to see that they are at least starting to question the load growth prospects. During the boom around 2000, warehouse owners overbuilt the number of data center conversions by a significant amount, the revenue per sqft compared to plain warehouse space is considerable and there were a lot of companies hoping to cash in that never leased the space. Is there a profit in AI or is it a boom that’s going to be followed by a big bust and if the grid and generators get over built to meet the demand that might not be there the consumers will get stuck with the bill.
https://ieefa.org/resources/risk-ai-driven-overbuilt-infrastructure-real