Blackouts loom this winter

garo · 01-10-2021 10:34PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117962527#Comment_117962527

Look at the report from CRU here: https://www.cru.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/CRU21060-CRU-consultation-on-Data-Centre-measures.pdf Graph on page 12.

My guess is they confused 70% of the increase in electricity use with 70% of electricity. Note that in the last 5 years non-DC electricy use has been flat in Ireland while DC use has more than quadrupled.

bullit_dodger · 01-10-2021 11:51PM

Yeah, it's in the report allright.... (thanks for that garo)

The median demand forecast predicts data centres accounting for 25% of all demand by 2030. This increases to 33% in the high demand forecast. This represents a current forecast position; it does not include all of the most recently received data centre applications seeking connection, discussed below

Pretty much inline with my own estimations. To have datacenters using 70% of the countries generation.....just not possible. Not even remotely.

That said, as much as 25-30% seems a lot......I always get concerned when I see politicians saying things like "Ohh we'll have a moratorium on building new datacentres" etc. rather than fixing the grid to support the infrastructure and getting the large consumers to help pay for it.

Not building datacenters, means no construction jobs in building the centers, jobs to support the infra, revenue (rates/taxes) from the companies. Back in the day the large consumers were like AUGHINISH ALUMINA. To tell them to "look elsewhere" is ..... shortsighted.

reklamos · 02-10-2021 10:15AM

Lets be fare that the amount of taxes we doe get is small and that is the main reason why we have IT companies moving in here in the first place. It is not because of brilliant infrastructure that we have in here. On top if that they probably get some incetive from the government to come in here. The most of money for teh economy would be generated during building phase. After that there is not much going in here. Support is minimal and mostly remote. You do not need a lot and highly qualified staff to rack and stack or replace faulty parts. Think what the government and especially the greens should be pushing for is to make these DCs as much self sustainable as they could. They have massive roof areas and can plaster them with PV and have batteries. Yes Ireland is not Spain but none this would make DCs more self reliant and maybe also help the grid during the few good days that we do have.

And stayin on topic 70% used by DCs is complete nonsense and scare mongering. Some politicians have no idea how to read(probably they have not) numbers or understand stats.

bullit_dodger · 02-10-2021 12:19PM

Very true, and I speak as a software developer, the number of people to run a full datacenter is probably 100-150. You'd think it'd be more, but it's not and mostly that's in the facilities side of things. Maintenance of AC, (heating/cooling), electrical, etc. only a few of the hard techies youd expect to see. Still if you have companies willling to spend €250m on construction of facilities and you can get them in the door, that's jobs for what 500-1000 people over 3-4 years?

The Aughnish example I gave is a good one. They setup their own 140mw generation plant to help the grid out. This was 20 years ago and back then they would probably have been the largest single consumer on the grid for 20 years since they were setup in the early 80's. They were the "datacenters" of the day.

Aughinish 140mw power plant welcomed by ESB - Independent.ie - article from 2002

As you say, it'd be great to see the tech companies doing the same, starting out at the least covering their roofs with PV, although it would only be "a start" in the right direction. Their power requirements would need sq km's of roof!! But if they could get 5% from their own roofs, hell it's helping at least. Get some windmills cofunded with the government (they maybe doing this already? - I don't know).

Bugs the bejasus out of me when you have politicans directing the policy when they haven't a clue. Not a clue.

garo · 02-10-2021 04:29PM

They would get way more that 5% from a roof plastered in PV. Personally I think the government needs to get its finger out and do this:

1) Approve tons of off-shore wind.

2) Make it a requirement for any DC application that they install loads of solar PV and have tons of battery storage.

3) Make it compulsory for DCs to to make at least 25% of their demand dispatchable. In other words, in times of load the DCs should discharge from their batteries into the grid and in times of high production and low consumption DCs should charge their batteries. Obviously there are limits to how much a DC would let its batteries discharge - say 50%. Give them some financial incentive to do so. i.e. pay them market rate for the power they pump into the grid in times of shortage.

DCs can be an invaluable resource for stabilizing the grid and speeding the transition to renewables. But the govt and regulators need to be proactive.

Markcheese · 02-10-2021 06:05PM

Didnt all the dairy plants build gas CHP plants in the mid 2000s as well ?

Look at all the gas line extensions ,from that era ... macroom , ballineen , nenagh ,charleville ,listowel

As well as chps in mallow and mitchelstown ,and I assume every other large milk processing plant ...

These plants are big users of heat - and electricity , so it's more cost effective to just buy the gas themselves,

I'm assuming these Are all the simpler , but less efficient open cycle plants ..

But anyway datacentres don't want heat , in fact they're trying to get rid of low grade heat. .

02-10-2021 07:32PM

25-30% usage is crazy for DCs.

Particularly with the relative low number of jobs they will bring in.

bullit_dodger · 02-10-2021 07:46PM

They would get way more that 5% from a roof plastered in PV.

hmmmm, initially I thought the same until I looked into it and then ran some numbers in my head. Your typical datacenter wolfs down 60-100mw. Fairly stable too, but they do reduce overnight and at the weekend slightly (10-20%) The biggest solar farm in the UK (Shotwick solar park) produces 72mw and that takes up 250 acres. 250 acres!! Yikes!

The UK’s 5 Biggest Solar Farms | Community Solar | Deege Solar

So assuming they had that size it would match the load, but only when the when the sun is shining. In reality the datacenter roofs wouldn't have anywhere near that kind of surface area, and of course we know from our own residential production (sept being a good example) that the sun is sometime a fickle mistress - and in winter, it's a token gesture at best. No, 5-10% at a push I'd say with all the roof plastered in PV. I would very much argue that they should plaster the hell out of the roof, but sadly that's all it will cover of the load. But they could use that to charge batteries and do peak load shaving etc. That's really the main issue for Eirgrid as I understand it.

I like your ideas though. I'd add one more.

Get them to co-fund the installation of the wind turbines. If they are using 100mw, get them to pony up say 30% of the cost of 20x9mw turbines, and then sweeten the deal by giving them preferrencial rates for the units. Or even for free for 5 years or something. Essentially paying up front for the leccie. Ireland benefits from having the infrastrucutre and they benefit from cheap(er) leccie.

josip · 02-10-2021 10:59PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117967066#Comment_117967066

That Indo article also mentions "The ESB is currently building new plants at Lanesboro, Co Longford and Shannonbridge, Co Offaly."

Both short sighted, both closed.

bullit_dodger · 02-10-2021 11:15PM

Dunno if I'd go as far as to say short sighted - I mean they operated for 20 years nearly only shutting down last year when the got refused permission to keep burning peat. 20 years is a good crack of the whip, no?

Personally I'd have preferred to see other alternative generation facilities, but solar was nowhere to be seen back in 2002 and wind was only starting to gain traction. Not sure what else they could have done - but to kind of circle back to the original point of the black outs in Ireland this winter, it's the great problem with renewables isn't it? When the sun don't shine or the wind doesn't blow.....we're forced back into firing up gas/coal/oil stations. :-(

garo · 03-10-2021 08:24AM

I like your idea about complementing solar with wind. And the DC site may not be suitable for wind so they should fund some turbines elsewhere. That 60-100MW number sounds awfully high. From the report I linked earlier most DCs in the Dublin area are under 30 MW. Google and Microsoft are at 80 and an "undiclosed client" at 140 but it is not clear if these are single DCs or the sum of multiple DCs' power requirements.

Also one big attraction for these companies is Ireland's relatively mild climate so they don't have to invest lots of money into cooling. We should encourage the to be even more energy neutral. Make it a requirement for application approval.

slave1 · 03-10-2021 08:44AM

As a reference, as early two EV household and "normal" commutes for both, we were just shy 20MW annual consumption up to COVID

bullit_dodger · 03-10-2021 11:59AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117969778#Comment_117969778

Yeah, that was my thinking too about the DC site not being suitable for wind, that they would pay for wind turbines "somewhere" be it offshore in Dublin bay as a part of that forthcoming project or on the west of Ireland. Datacenters are certainly a part of the problem, but they could also be part of the solution too and ultimately help us get towards a higher % of renewables in the energy mix. Glad to see in Eirgrid's report that they are against moritoriums. That to me seems like sticking your head in the sand hoping the problem will go away

I picked 80mw as I knew the Microsoft one was that. Didn't know that there is one out there with 140mw, I wonder who that is (Amazon?) but in any case we know that currently they amount for about 20% of the overall usage, so .... it's a lot. Aint going to do that with Solar.

I tell you the more I look into the whole "behind the magic curtain" of Eirgrid and how they shuffle energies around with interconnectors, firing up stations, trying to keep Sting and Gretta from coming over and bitch slapping them, matching demand with production years in advance, the more respect I have for them.

Not easy.

03-10-2021 12:12PM

Like everything else that hasn’t been properly planned for in this country, this was so utterly predictable. Data centres are absolutely critical for the future, Ireland is a good place to have them, but they should only be allowed to be constructed in a manner where they supply at least some of their own renewable energy needs, and to be kicked into carbon offsets. Anything else is not acceptable.

bullit_dodger · 03-10-2021 12:34PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117970418#Comment_117970418

Yeah, Ireland is a great place for them. English speaking (most tech companies are US based), well educated people, we're not sitting on a earthquake fault line, temperate climate. It's basically perfect for datacenters. If only we could figure a way to make electricity out of rain :-)

To go back to the original point a sec, I'm just old enough to remember the proposed nuclear site in Cairnsore pt in the late 70's (or was it early 80's). I wonder if people's opinion to nuclear has changed in the decades since. As much as I like renewables it's hard to see countries avoiding brownouts/blackouts without nuclear or someone solving large scale energy storage. I've got some misgivings myself, but the French seem to have nailed it.

slave1 · 03-10-2021 12:44PM

Nuclear, literally a single digit fraction of waste relative to other forms of toxic waste produced without question, and of that the vast majority is considered "safe", a few buckets of radioactive rods is all for a country this size per annum and yet Nuclear not considered "green" nor an option.

Typical old school approach due to Windscale, Long Island and Chernobyl

03-10-2021 12:57PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117970475#Comment_117970475

😂 waaay before I was born, and that wasn’t yesterday, they did sort of find a way of making electricity out of rain… called hydroelectric power 😂

But hey, you are onto something there. Solar panel roofs with rain collectors beneath the tilted panels, driving both water needs and gravity fed hydro power. With wind turbines in addition. Have it all.

bullit_dodger · 03-10-2021 01:38PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117970537#Comment_117970537

Yeah, but all the viable places for hydro have been used. There is that plan in the silvermines I came across, but I haven't looked it up to see what they were planning.

Don't laugh, you can actually convert the kinetic energy in raindrops into electricity via piezo electric cells. It's feck all though. Like tiny tiny, even in a storm.

(PDF) Piezoelectric model of rainfall energy harvester (researchgate.net)

Once they nail that lads......Ireland with be the new "Saudi Arabia" of the energy world :-)

04-10-2021 09:57AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117970660#Comment_117970660

I know feck all about that technology but it did strike my mind that in theory raindrops mighty convert to energy. Like everything, technology inevitably develops to overcome limitations to some degree, and Ireland could become a powerhouse of energy. But think about how the tropical areas might then compete!

the_amazing_raisin · 06-10-2021 01:26PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117969778#Comment_117969778

Isn't that essentially what these "green" DCs do already? They basically pay a wind farm to put an equal amount of energy back onto the grid as they're using already

Jonathan · 06-10-2021 01:33PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117983788#Comment_117983788

Yes, and the same thing if you buy your residential electricity from SSE, Energia, or one of the "100% green" electricity suppliers.

If you don't have solar on your house, you can be assured that your electrons are coming from a dinosaur-fueled power plant during the summer months, irrespective of your supplier. The wind just ain't blowing.

josip · 06-10-2021 02:38PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117983856#Comment_117983856

Since we're on the subject of bursting bubbles and dispelling myths, there aren't any dinosaurs in coal or gas. Sorry.

https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/explainer-where-fossil-fuels-come

the_amazing_raisin · 06-10-2021 02:40PM

I think one thing that everyone is skipping over is that a lot of these generators that shut down weren't necessarily for climate reasons, it was because they couldn't compete in the energy market here. I know Hunstown was on the ropes a while ago because they only got a contract for 1 of the 2 generators there and the plant wasn;t econimical to operate at the prices demanded

As demand increases, then rightly we should be adding more supply. Unfortunately the view of Eirgrid seems to be to invest in keeping coal and oil power plants going for the short term. It's probably the easy option, but somewhat shortsighted

In my view there needs to be a complete overhaul of the planning process for wind turbines and large scale solar PV to get them up and running faster, as well as investment in pumped hydro and batteries.

As a nation, we also need to get a lot better at responding to energy availability. I've noticed that nobody has said there's going to be a shortage of energy at night, so why can't we start moving more power hungry stuff to night time? In the case of DCs, doing stuff like backups isn't time critical and can be done out of hours

The best thing to do with electricity is to use it, storing in batteries or hydro or making hydrogen is just introducing waste and extra costs

We'll need some storage for sure, but pricing the market to encourage usage during off peak times would vastly reduce the amount of storage required

reklamos · 06-10-2021 03:04PM

There is a lot of stuff done during the night(including backups) in DCs. The problem is that DC power demand is driven by humans. There are not many who do their Amazon shopping at night or watch Netflix at 3am. So the load does go down substantially during the night on DCs. Now of course a possible solution could be to stream netwflix from Ireland to US during the night but that adds additional latency and cost. This is the reason why we have CDNs that keep content as close to the user as possible. There's also licensing, data protection etc. which means the DCs are working normal hours as the country/region they are in.

bullit_dodger · 06-10-2021 04:50PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117984354#Comment_117984354

I don't think that the default view of Eirgrid is to add more gas/coal. They have the same problem that many countries have, is that there need to be a mix. If Eirgrid goes full bore onto say, Wind and gets approval for say 10 wind farms, while it'd great to see that happen, I don't think we (Joe public) would be too happy when a massive bout of pleasant weather sits over the British isles for 6 weeks and we can't boil a kettle cause the wind isn't blowing.

Going "Sorry lads - we got it wrong" isn't really an option. So they need to balance risk against all other competing priorities - and while I don't like to see it, I understand the need for a gas fired station.

Moving load is generally a good idea, and I think there's few people who's argue against that.... but the reality is that people come home from work, turn the kettles on, kids fire up the xbox, people all make meals at roughly the same time. These "spikes" in daily usage are hard to shift. Some of it can be done by smart time based tarrifs, where people pay more for doing stuff at peak hours, but it's a hard problem.

Honestly, the more I look into Eirgrid and the challanges they have, the more respect I have for them. Not easy.

unkel · 06-10-2021 04:59PM

@bullit_dodger - we need an awful lot more sun and wind electricity. Combined with an awful lot more storage (batteries). So in that sunny period, wind doesn't play much of a role, but solar + batteries does. And in that cold period, sun doesn't play any role, but wind + batteries does

Combine that with a very large bandwidth of interconnector exchanges between Ireland and (far away) countries, the reliance on fossil fuels should be minimal (maybe a couple of gas plants for backup ONLY in say 15-25 years from now)

reklamos · 06-10-2021 05:04PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117985008#Comment_117985008

That requires combined long term thinking and investment which we all know is not the case in ROI.

bullit_dodger · 06-10-2021 05:34PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117985008#Comment_117985008

100% - couldn't agree more unkel, and if I was "King" (LOL) I'd have 200% of our "max load" generating in renewables, over producing and pumping the excess into long term storage. Be that molten batteries, lithium, ferrite batteries, or one of the other long term storage options like compressed air, hydrogen, etc. But most of those technologies while they show some promise, they haven't been scaled yet. No doubt in my mind - none so whatsoever, that they'll get the scale thing worked out......but and here's the crux, will consumers (think your neighbor, or your parents if they are still alive), would they be happy paying 2x the price of leccie, even if it was "green".

That's the thing - has to be fiscally viable, and I'm optimistic there. It will come. Even the "ahh sure feckit begorha" mentality of Ireland will adopt anything where it just "makes sense" to save a few quid.

My point was (and I don't know if you saw the National development plan there yesterday?) was in the context of that new gas fired generator which got approval. We aren't there yet in terms of being able to distance ourselves from gas/coal. I wish it wasn't the case, but sadly it's where we are.

Also in terms of pumped storage - right now it's the best (arguable) storage mechanism we have for instant dispatching of loads into the grid. Gas/coal/oil all take a while to spin up. Opening the gate and letting the water flow is pretty quick.

unkel · 06-10-2021 05:46PM

I'm also pretty optimistic. In that it can easily and cheaply be done. Wind is supercheap and Ireland (west coast) has the best wind conditions for electricity generation in the world (at about 50% yearly yield of the max rated capacity, which is astonishingly good). With the €13 billion that Apple owe us we could generate about 300% of current total yearly electricity consumption. That's a tiny investment and indeed should cost the Irish tax payer nothing.

Solar is actually also very good in this country with a solar PV panel south facing in one of the better areas (roughly the east) getting about 50% of the yield of the best places for solar on earth. A lot of people don't know this, but the colder it is, the better PV works. Obviously this is a small country and we can't plaster every field with solar. We have to be realistic. But a few giant solar farms in remote areas and of course covering most of existing buildings with solar is a good target

Then the interconnector capacity. And of course GWHs of lithium battery storages. A million private EV vehicles and half a million commercial EV vehicles alone would give 100GWh of storage. Not too hard to add another 100GWh of grid and home attached lithium storage. Plus pumped hydro, plus hydrogen production and storage for heating and industry / shipping fuel.

None of this is hard, all old school tech at this stage and none of this is prohibitively expensive to do. We just need to get off our arses and get on with it.

Ubbquittious · 06-10-2021 05:47PM

Would this problem be sorted if we had a small nuclear power station? For example 4x 500MW reactors so hopefully 3 online at any given time + mass adoption (1GW+) of solar?

Are the datacentres first in line for any load shedding due to occur? Do they even have a means of easily load shedding a particular data centre?

Blackouts loom this winter

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