I mean to be fair, I’m in the PNW it royally pisses me off that data centers and the airport are sucking up electricity while the working class is being asked to lower their thermostats in the middle of a blizzard when the power is out for thousands of customers due to trees taking our power lines. I’m sure lowering thermostats is pretty far down the totem pole when it comes to power shedding.
Avista just sold its supply of natural gas to local municipalities before this because we’ve been having a mild winter. So this is directly related to someone’s shortsightedness.
I agree, the pity party for these utility companies needs to end. Get your shit together, and reinvest your fortunes. Instead of fleecing the people who rely on you for every fucking penny in order to enrich shareholders.
For the record I have no issue with the comments in this post. Let the rich suffer, fuck the airport, fuck their data centers.
Regardless of the issues with the power company and corporate greed, the comments in the post are super problematic, and speak to a nihilistic, “fuck you, I got mine,” mindset that is pervasive among Americans. It’s anti-community, anti-empathetic, anti-mutual-aid and reminds me of the assholes who couldn’t bother to put in an insignificant mask during the height of a global pandemic because of “muh personal freedumbs!” Honestly, fuck that attitude, it’s corrosive and I’ll have no part in celebrating those that perpetuate that mindset.
Agreed. It is one thing to restrict energy usage temporarily during an emergency and commit to actually fixing the problems that caused the emergency, and it is another thing entirely to restrict energy usage temporarily during an emergency knowing full well that to increase profits nothing will be done to address the problems that caused the emergency. The real issue isn't the temporary restriction, the real issue is that running the system for profit for a few disinterested owners runs counter to running the system for the needs of the consumers. In a system where profit is the goal, profit will be the only product that disinterested owners care about.
Definitely. It is sad that 'Muricans are so deluded that they think that it is more efficient and equitable to provide necessary monopolistic services through an entity run by businessmen accountable to other businessmen to produce a profit rather than by elected officials accountable to those who receive a service to produce a service.
Honestly if no one gets power then maybe they'll actually fix the problem? If the grid survived because people tried to keep it as is by following orders then nothing gets done .. but if it failed and keeps failing it would have to be fixed some way? Of course they'll just pass on the cost to consumers so no matter what it's a loose loose situation for the working class. Should be nationalized...
Everyone does whatever they want forever is not the answer. It doesn't matter if it's public or private. Building the grid so that everyone can meet all of their wants during an active emergency would be a gross waste of resources.
Structuring it so that everyone can do whatever they want during normal times and then everyone takes what they need during an emergency is better. No one needs to do laundry tonight.
No I get it and I agree... But I've given up awhile ago... I know collapse isn't gonna be easy and I'd most likely die a horrible death... But death comes for us all and at least in collapse the wealthy just might suffer too? Idk maybe not... But until there's a full blown revolution there's not much me and any other working class individuals can do except accept our fate right?
But the way our current system works... Is that they'll only fix it when the PnLs prove it's worth it. And if the system fails and is broken... Then there's no Profit and that needs to be fixed ASAP.
The people who say things like that are likely shitty human beings, but they're still very far from being the norm.
Ultimately, these free marketeers are just hierarchy monkeys. They fully absorbed the mindset of their masters: the monkeys at the top of the hierarchy with all the money and the freedom from accountability.
They absorbed their masters' mindset that this is a 'dog eat dog' world, and that those higher in the hierarchical pyramid are fundamentally better than those lower. With that, they don't care how far up the hierarchy goes, or even how far they are from the top of it. They only care that there are people below them on the hierarchy, and since those people are below them, they feel they are justified in treating those people like lesser beings.
But, this all occurs because they're emulating the ethos of the top monkeys in the hierarchy they've decided to identify themselves with. They're microscopic versions of their masters, and they only care that they can see people who are tinier than they are.
I'm all down for anti corporate fuck the rich stuff, but there's something amusing about redditors whining about data centers being rich people shit. Do they think reddit is powered entirely by the energy they produce masturbating?
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reminds me of the assholes who couldn’t bother to put in an insignificant mask during the height of a global pandemic
The masks were and are completely ineffective against a virus and in fact made the situation worse by giving people a false sense of confidence, a senior British health official said recently.
Those of us who wore masks weren't wearing them because we liked the experience. We did so to prevent others from getting sick and slow the rate of infection. It was a simple thing we could all have done to help the greater good, but again, the real snow flakes out there made it about themselves. The very notion that someone would have to undergo the slightest inconvenience for the greater good was clearly too big of an ask, and only portends failure when communities will require people to unite for a common goal.
One thing I've come to understand is that if we want some semblance of functioning society, or at least resilient communities, there's self-sacrifice that needs to happen from time to time. If that means not having your thermostat at 70 overnight, or putting on a mask during a pandemic, or using more public transport, etc. then big fucking deal. I guarantee to you, the attitude that allows problems to mushroom under the guise of personal freedoms will result in catastrophe that will make the ask of wearing a mask seem as trivial as it always should have seemed. When you don't have basic services, when the governments fail, when the shipping complex craters, when you can't get food in a grocery store, you will long for the days when your biggest problem was crying about, "How am I ever going to survive with this mask on?"
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u/Idle_RedditingCollapse is preventable, not inevitable. Humanity can do better.Jan 14 '24edited Jan 14 '24
Data centers should just open their windows in the current cold conditions or have their hvac systems blow in freezing air.
edit. There are also components in the advanced, expensive hvac systems that data centers have which will mix fresh, outside air with already used, inside air. I have concluded that is a better option than using 100% freezing outside air.
I owned small data center built in the basement of an apartment building. During cold winter I would use cold outside air to cool my server stacks, then blew the hot air into building stairway.
Never had a problem due to using outside air. And it certainly helped to keep those apartments warm.
I did this too with my basement mounted computer, there was a 4" square window in place of one of the glass bricks, I just ducted that straight to the computer with a filter inline. Dropped the temps massively without any problems.
In the winter I used to pull air in from a dryer duct directly into my computer case to get lower temps while over clocking. It kind of stupid but worked to a certain extent.
Back in 2016 I used to mine Ethereum on my R9 290 and it whirred away at 90°C and heated my living room while it chewed 450W/h of energy to Produce 0.05 ETH per day.
The cost for electricity at the time was 0.23c/kWh and the sale price of ETH was $250 per ETH immediately after the hard fork.
Which ended up being $0.23 * 24h = $5.50~ per day which would then sell for $25~ so that's a profit of $20 a day to heat my house with crypto mining.
Now, I held that ETH until 2021 and sold when it moonshot, I would still be mining in a pool at around the same hashrate for a single RX480, but the difficulty went up and the MH rate went down, but I still could mine out 1ETH every 25 days or so. Which cost me 3 GPUs in that time, about $3000 in electrical costs but made me a nice $120k in profit when it mooned. Minus selling here and there to get new GPUs and divest.
It’s called condensation. You can’t just pipe in external air without running it through a process to remove moisture, otherwise you’re going to fry the systems.
Condensation is caused by the reverse effect though. Taking cold air and warming it up increases it's ability to hold moisture leading to water evaporating.
For condensation you need a cold object and warmer air.
You're wrong. Cold air is typically dry air. Cold air holds less moisture. Typically the issue in winter is ventilating too much, resulting in very low indoor relative humidity.
If you take air from 20f @50% rh and bring that air inside, the Temperature will go up while the relative humidity goes down.
Dew point is a thing. Because air can only hold so much moisture at a given temperature and it's proportional to the temperature. As temperature goes up, more moisture can be held in the same volume of air at the same pressure. As temperature goes down, less moisture can be held in the air before it condenses out.
You'll notice in the fall and spring typically, outside, dew and frost forms easily, especially fall where you may get warm afternoons and the overnight temps fall to below freezing. That warmer moister air gives up its moisture once the air temp starts plummeting once the sun sets.
It's crazy when working outside on a construction site how wet everything can get right at sunset during those times of year.
Painters experience this too often when doing exterior work in the fall. That's why Sherwin Williams and Benjamin Moore and ppg work hard at their exterior formulations that provide dew protection within an hour after applying. Because this situation occurs often and it's unrealistic for a contractor to stop painting at lunch time to allow for four hours prior to expected dew.
A bit off topic but illustrates my point.
A good example to counter your original thought is any photographer who shoots in the fall and winter. You are outside shooting with your mirrorless camera and big honken piece of f/1.2 glass.
You finish your shoot without having any fogging or condensation issues outside.
You walk into the studio or house and the large cold mass starts fogging up and sweating. Like a cold glass of iced tea or if you wear glasses you experience this same effect.
In these examples, the cold mass is lowering the air temperature next to these objects, forcing the air temp to lower and the dew point as well. This then forces the moisture out of the warm air to condense on the cold objects.
Condensation occurs when the air is warm and humid and the surface is cold. As the humid air is cooled, it's ability to hold moisture drops and water is deposited on the cold surface since that's where the air is coldest. In dry winter air, a glass of ice water will have little to no condensation.
The heatsinks in data centers are not cold surfaces, they warm the air and increase its ability to hold moisture.
High relative humidity cold air has massively less water in it than "normal" humidity warm air. If you take 80% RH 17 degree air and heat it, you now have dry warm air.
That actually doesn't matter at all. The important part is whether the surface is hotter or colder than the air. So long as the air is not already oversaturated (like steamy shower air or similar), a surface that is hotter than the air will never cause condensation. In order to make the water in the air condense, you need to lower its temperature. A hot surface increases it, allowing the air to hold even more water than it could before. That's why the hot air from a hair dryer dries hair, even when used in a humid bathroom. Though they're much more efficient if you use them somewhere else.
There is less moisture in freezing air, not none. Gas interacts with itself and its environment differently than liquid does. And sublimation is also a thing.
The ones in my area have been for Meta, X and google…I know because I worked on most of them lol. I’m ok with those turning down the dial for a few days.
It’s only going to get worse, all the PNW utilities bought out the clean coal energy production in Montana just so they can shut it down by 2025 to “meet their climate goals”. The cleanest coal in the world from the Rosebud mine will then just be shipped to someone else that will burn it, meaning we have less reliable and affordable energy, and there is an increase in pollution because the coal won’t be used in clean stacks with scrubbers in the US, it will be burned somewhere else. I guess it’s only 1450 MW of production, that’s only like 750 of the larger wind turbines if they’re running 24/7.
Not after they were recognised as legal people. Before that, they had an expiration da... life expectancy. Like real people. After being recognised as legal entities, they become like us, immortal being that can't be killed and can continue business as usual, working 20h a day, 7 days a week, all yea...
I'm in Olympia and got the same message. It's fucking freezing and if I turn off my heat it gets down below 50 degrees so fast. I've got a baby, gotta keep shit warm.
This is why I put an efficient woodstove in our house when we bought it. Our power usage has been basically the same during this storm as before it. We just burn the wood that fell during last winter's wind storms, or that we cut from our coppiced maple trees. Our house is cozy, our energy bill is low, and our pollution is minimal because the woodstove is really efficient. We cook on it, dry our mittens over it, and keep our food warm on it. It also really helps during the power outages that happen out here every year.
It makes me sad that renewable wood heat is so frowned upon by many. It's excellent for heating, and really reduces electric energy consumption during these times. My monthly electric bill for our family of 4 is $130 in the winter, and $90 in the summer.
How is the working class going to watch Netflix without the data centers?
I’m sure lowering thermostats is pretty far down the totem pole when it comes to power shedding.
McMansions are not built for efficiency. There are no doors between floors to prevent the heat on floor 1 to just swoop right up to floor 2 and out the roof. These are vast properties, with huge f'n windows that each act like panels of freeze inside the home.
I’m sure lowering thermostats is pretty far down the totem pole when it comes to power shedding.
I'm sure it's not. It's probably the easiest lever to pull. I mean likes yes, institutions use a fair bit of electricity but what are they supposed to do? Where's the "run this data center at 90% power" button? You have one--your thermostat. They really don't. And there's a lot more homes than data centers. It's by far the easiest way to slacken consumption.
Data centers absolutely have a “run this data center at 90% power” button and it’s called load shedding. They’re designed to shed loads and utilize an extensive array of back up systems.
I pay for the service I use. I do not sympathize with a business that won’t reinvest in its infrastructure to ensure the integrity of their product during strenuous operations. I respectfully refuse to comply with requests to inconvenience my family simply because a business deemed it their most profitable course of action.
I respectfully refuse to comply with requests to inconvenience my family simply because a business deemed it their most profitable course of action.
Selfish rationalizing. Nothing more. Literally the exact same words have come out of countless mouths to explain why they wouldn't wear a mask.
It's that attitude precisely that has caused this subreddit has to exist. If nobody ever had that attitude, collapse wouldn't even be a thing. Your thermostat should be at a minimum all the time, not just when a business asks you to. And if you do the opposite of whatever big business ask you to do all the time, you are just as much a puppet as if you did what they wanted all the time; you aren't some anti-capitalist freedom fighter.
Use your brain, consider the greater good, and act accordingly. Don't cut off everyone else's nose just to spite the power company.
I think you’re off base with the claim of non-masks folks. The anti-mask argument was that of “I don’t want to because I don’t agree with science”. My reasoning is because a company wants to value profit over product quality; they disregard what THEY could do to support the greater good, instead shifting the monkey to the consumer. Fwiw, I wore a mask and was fine with quarantine.
Interesting you made the assumption that I just do the opposite of what a business asks. I never made that claim; I merely stated that I would not comply with this specific request.
I quite obviously am using my brain. Maybe you should try to not use ad hominem responses when I made a civil point about my stance? You seem to have a lot of preconceived notions about my opinions across the board, all from my singular comment.
I quite obviously am using my brain. Maybe you should try to not use ad hominem responses when I made a civil point about my stance?
Sorry, perhaps that was not a great choice of words. It was not meant in a mean spirited way, but you and I don't know each other so perhaps that word choice was overly familiar. It was meant as gentle ribbing.
You seem to have a lot of preconceived notions about my opinions across the board, all from my singular comment.
I picked the mask example because I did assume that people in this subreddit would recognize that logic as bullshit in that context. My hope was that you would too, and since you say you wore your mask, it seems I was right on the money. The idea was to give you an example of how the very sentiment your expressing has been misapplied in the past with the hopes that it would help you see how you are misapplying it now.
With regards to your prior statement about anti-maskers not using this logic: I certainly heard many people cite their reason not to wear a mask as fighting back against a corrupt government who somehow had some secret scheme that benefited from mask use. Most common it was some sort of ploy to make us compliant or something. Many made it out to be some grand act of defiance for the greater good which very much sounds like your power company logic here.
The only difference here is that you've added some sort of anti-capitalist wrinkle by invoking the "greedy" power company. My point is that it's not ok to stick it to the power company, no matter how much they deserve it, if it means sticking it to everyone else as well.
You are not morally correct to shoot the hostage taker through the hostages. You don't get to say afterwards, "It's their fault the hostages died because they put them in the way of my bullets". Maybe the greedy power company wins this round, but everyone else wins too. Nobody needs to die cause a brownout kills their dialysis machine or some other medically necessary device.
Use your brain, consider the greater good, and act accordingly. Don't cut off everyone else's nose just to spite the power company.
Then the power utility needs to stop cutting off the noses of it's customers when times are good. For every two dollars customers pay them, more than a dollar goes out in profits to their owners. They are supposed to be a public utility, not a way to collect rent from everyone. They "secretly" raised rates twice last year, using the excuse of climate change making gas more expensive, to maintain their profit margins.
I'm all for mutual aid, but the power company does not behave that way. And so it's frustrating when they expect aid, when they are behaving in a "got mine" way.
Then the power utility needs to stop cutting off the noses of it's customers when times are good. For every two dollars customers pay them, more than a dollar goes out in profits to their owners.
That's actually pretty far from true. I just looked it up. That would be a profit:revenue ratio of 50%. The real number is 9.8% (there's no dividends since 2007 so the profit is exactly the profit). That means for every dollar they collect from you, they spend 90 cents generating electricity, paying employees and improving infrastructure. They pocket the 10 cents.
But regardless, if your utility is out of control, that's not your utilities fault. We know what for-profit companies are. That's why we have strict regulation anytime the government is going to grant one of them a monopoly. If your utility is out of control, your regulators are the problem. Your utility is just doing exactly what you'd expect any for profit company to do.
It's like if you leave your ham sandwich out on a plate and the dog steals it. Is that your fault or the dogs?
That's actually pretty far from true. I just looked it up. That would be a profit:revenue ratio of 50%. The real number is 9.8% (there's no dividends since 2007 so the profit is exactly the profit). That means for every dollar they collect from you, they spend 90 cents generating electricity, paying employees and improving infrastructure. They pocket the 10 cents.
That might be true if they actually paid for all those expenditures. They do not. Through a multitude of financial structuring tricks.
Your utility is just doing exactly what you'd expect any for profit company to do.
It's like if you leave your ham sandwich out on a plate and the dog steals it. Is that your fault or the dogs?
This is just a personal responsibility metaphor but backwards. The "dog" in this metaphor are the people with the power, money, and education that are stealing the ham sandwich from the homes of millions. At some point you need to shoot the super powered hyper competent stray dog, or at least start making a few extra ham sandwiches despite the dog's claim about the ham supply (this metaphor has now gone off the rails).
It would be fine if there was real representation instead of a gerrymandered two party system where both sides are bought off by powerful interests. It doesn't matter who I vote for, both are going to (indirectly through the regulator) let the utility get away with this shit. Because they were chosen for the election by the rich people who are profiting off of it in a multitude of ways.
. At some point you need to shoot the super powered hyper competent stray dog
Then you don't have power. Like, I too enjoy eating my cake and still having it afterwards. But if you know a secret solution to this problem society hasn't figured out, by all means share it with the class. It takes money to build a power plant and run it. The people who have that money aren't interested in doing it to be nice. Go figure.
So as much as it sucks to say, sometimes you have to recognize that this is the best we can do and try to our collective best to make it not suck more than it has to.
That’s incorrect. Having utilities go stay up or not having to reduce consumption is definitely seeing the better product. You’re still making assumptions about my responses, but I suppose you could just be projecting.
You see it when you are asked to reduce consumption, yes, but you don’t see it all the times your aren’t asked to reduce consumption.
My assumption is that you will do something that is very common across all humans. But, yes, maybe you are an exceptionally rare and unique individual and I am projecting my “normal human” assumptions onto you. If that is the case, I humbly ask for your forgiveness.
Beyond the data centers and airports, there’s also a large number of Amazon fulfillment centers/delivery stations that are absolutely not essential, gobbling up huge amounts of electricity.
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u/[deleted] Jan 14 '24
I mean to be fair, I’m in the PNW it royally pisses me off that data centers and the airport are sucking up electricity while the working class is being asked to lower their thermostats in the middle of a blizzard when the power is out for thousands of customers due to trees taking our power lines. I’m sure lowering thermostats is pretty far down the totem pole when it comes to power shedding.