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Comment by code_biologist | Hacker News Reader

Your language is ambiguous — your horror is in reference to natural gas turbine generators (used at these installations) and not gasoline generators (like in a home context)?

Why the horror? I'd prefer the gas remain in the ground, but given the gassy production of US shale oil, I guess I'd rather it be used for this than just flared. I am frustrated that pollutant emissions aren't being policed, and also that the sudden turbine demand plus supply chain issues mean using aeroderivative turbines that are quite a bit less efficient than more complex combined cycle turbines.

https://www.energy.gov/hgeo/how-gas-turbine-power-plants-wor...

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I'd prefer they use cheap and available renewables rather than accelerating climate change. But to each their own I guess.

(And to head it off at the pass: if that can't be done then this should be done at all)

Exactly, especially the case when solar+battery are so similar in cost to gas turbine:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#...

Land permitting is tough maybe why they use tents

There is currently 2x us electricity production in solar and batteries stuck in permit hell due to the US requiring they pay for grid upgrades before connection in a first in first out line that has grown in length and costs.

We could have cheap and available renewables, but we instead destroy them in bureaucratic hell that nobody cares about.

Are they connecting gas generators to the grid?

> due to the US requiring they pay for grid upgrades before connection

Is that not perfectly reasonable? Someone doing half the job and dumping the rest on everyone else seems like exactly the sort of thing a regulator exists to prevent.

Reading between the lines, it sounds like the issue is that solar would be located somewhere remote, the backhaul to get that electricity where it needs to be requires significant upgrades, and that takes time. Which is unfortunate and indicates historic mismanagement of said infrastructure but nonetheless the present day policy of "fix the problem first" seems perfectly reasonable.

The problem is, we didn't require any of the fossil fuel companies to do this.

We have plenty of fields producing just natural gas in the US. It is not merely a byproduct of oil production.

Only about 35 percent is “associated gas” production from oil production.

> I guess I'd rather it be used for this than just flared

I doubt this is really reducing the rates of flaring and leaky wells. Its just additional demand.

The biggest problem I've seen is they tend to build these somewhat close to residential areas with generation on-site. Often these power generation centers aren't right next to residential areas due to both air and noise pollution. But governments are often seeming to turn a blind eye.

Yes, the noise pollution is insane. Benn Jordan's YT video "Datacenters Behaving Like Acoustic Weapons" is an insightful, scary 30 min video covering the datacenter infrasound noise, and the nasty things infrasound does to people: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bP80DEAbuo

Hear hear! Much better to put all that energy to good use rather than waste it

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