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> If they plan on extracting 6GW they'll need to put it somewhere, what's a people hub near Yellowstone? ...

You can put it into aluminum production, for example, though at $0.10/kWh it's going to be an unprofitable business.

> If only 5% of your transmitted energy actually makes it to your buyer, without congestion, you're spending $0.10 / kWh but your buyer is paying $2.00 / kWh where the difference all goes to line losses.

You might get 95% loss if you wrapped your line around the globe, but for practical length of 1000 km, you can get as little as 3% with high voltage DC. Check out the Pacific DC Intertie, which is 50 years old instalation with over 800 miles of conductor spanning from Columbia River to Los Angeles.

Presumably any process that can use the heat directly rather than converting to electricity would be more cost-effective, as you lose most of the energy in that conversion.

I assume 350C isn't hot enough for aluminum which melts around 660C, but maybe there are other industrial processes that could take advantage of the heat. Maybe using the heat to kiln-dry wood or cure autoclaved aerated concrete blocks or something like that.

In aluminum production, the electricity is used for electrolytic reduction, not melting. It's the waste heat from that which keeps the cell hot enough.

> Presumably any process that can use the heat directly rather than converting to electricity would be more cost-effective, as you lose most of the energy in that conversion.

All practical electricity generation technologies do it through heating water just the same, and they produce hot water as a waste product too. So, if your industrial process can use heat directly, it might as well use waste heat from existing power plants.

And some places this is how entire cities are heated...

Well, usually they run out of excess heating in the winter.

Perhaps, Yellowstone and Iceland ought to have some heavy industry.

Iceland has some large aluminum smelters and aluminum is 40% of their export income[1]. They do heat their homes with geothermal. It's basically free and when I was there the lowest setting for the heat in my apartment was 22.4C (72F).

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Iceland

Interesting link. 800,000 mtpy is a lot of aluminium. While the ‘zero environmental imapct’ claim is controversial, the environment impact is definitely lower than many other producers.

> Presumably any process that can use the heat directly

Maybe build a massive seawater pipeline and create desalination plants that can then be redirected to California/Nevada

Bitcoin mining needs 2-4 cents, 10 cents remote seems tough, what value do we assign to saving all humanity?

If only 5% of your transmitted energy actually makes it to your buyer..

Isn't the typical transmission and distribution loss around 8% in the US? Why would it be 95%?

> Maybe building data centers nearby is a good way to mitigate the infrastructure problem.

Haha, I'm picturing the pitch on their risk profile. "Yes, it's built on top of an active volcano. But hey, if it goes off, the entire american economy and a large part of the internet will be gutted. So it's unlikely to be your highest concern."

I'm under the impression that a yellowstone eruption would devestate the whole world's economy due to the release of particulates into the atmosphere & associated global cooling

Yes, devastate the economy. As in, no crops could be grown for multiple years.

That's actually a pretty nifty risk assessment. Your datacenter is toast if the supervolcano erupts. But if the supervolcano erupts, the bulk of the human race will starve to death in 74 days. So there's very little actual risk to your company from building nearby. You're dead, literally, regardless.

Assessing such a project would probably drive an actuary insane.

what are the chances of smaller, non death of all mankind leaks that would damage the data center? likely higher than elsewhere, no? so that wouldn't an be amazing risk profile

You wouldn't build a datacenter directly on top of the supervolcano. It's in a national park, after all. Any sort of relatively minor incidents from the geothermal plant wouldn't affect datacenters located outside the park (and they could be a few hundred miles away, if need be). The degree of devastation from an eruption would be so great that the normal risks associated with "hey, build sort of near a volcano" don't really apply in the traditional sense.

> what are the chances of smaller, non death of all mankind leaks that would damage the data center?

I think it depends on the type of volcano. There's some volcanoes that only go boom, and some that only go ooze, and some that are in the middle. And, IIRC, yellowstone is one that's big-boom or nuthin'. But it's been a while since sophomore geology class.

One way or another, Warren Buffett will figure out a way to sell insurance that covers the actual data center. You'd definitely want to be setup with multi-availability zones just in case it does go.

One on each side of the volcano why not :)

My understanding is that getting a minor eruption from Yellowstone is kind of like trying to poke just a small hole in an inflated balloon. With the pressure down there, a leak of any size is going to expand catastrophically.

If you poke the hole in the correct place, the balloon does not pop. To be specific, that place is in the neck of the balloon, where the skin is thickest after being inflated. Alternately, stick a piece of tape over the balloon, and poke a hole through that. Or pinch the balloon at the antipode from the neck, poke a hollow needle through the fold, and leave the needle in place.

There is always a way to bleed off pressure relatively safely. There is not always a way to do it without bankrupting your entire economy. I don't even know how those balloon solutions translate to geology, but they feel like they could be expensive--from tens of billions to trillions of dollars.

Where did you get the idea that there would be a 95% energy loss rate? In general it never goes above 8-9%.

High voltage + low amperage = high energy transfer efficiency.

Maybe Yellowstone could become a large crypto miner :)

I like this idea a lot

It is worth noting that the market price of fossil-fuel energy is a bad comparison because it does not include all costs associated with it, such as pollution, workplace deaths and war.

According to Wikipedia, PV cells are 0.23/kWh.(1)

1-https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_sourc...

Good spot for the new Amazon HQ.

> Maybe building data centers nearby

Now THAT is interesting! Google is tying up hydroelectric dams with their centers currently, it seems quite feasible that massive geothermal energy could be put to work the same way. Deep-learning applications are seriously energy-hungry and they're going to need exponentially more in the future.

> Deep-learning applications are seriously energy-hungry and they're going to need exponentially more in the future.

So instead of eradicating humanity by erupting, Yellowstone will eradicate humanity by powering Skynet.