The numbers in the OP show that the RO equipment is by far the largest cost so you need to maximize its utilization. The energy is used to pump water through the RO at high pressure so another alternative would be to use solar to pump water uphill so you could run the RO at night. The design using batteries is easier to price.
There are energy companies like Quidnet that are commercializing geopressure storage, where water is pumped underground at pressure, then recovered and the energy extracted. This would be an ideal system to combine with solar and RO.
So if I build a plant today to produce water at 22 cents per cubic meter, somebody could come along next year and build another plant that produces water for 15 cents and put me out of business. Then the year after that, another plant produces water for 10 cents, etc. You need 20-year contracts to sell water at a fixed price to make this work.
The nonprofit will hold stock in the BPC. I think the effect of this is that the nonprofit board, which is independent of Altman, will be restricted from selling their shares. However the nonprofit will eventually convert from a public charity to a private foundation and will be required to give away a percentage of their assets every year. I'm not sure how that will work with a BPC.
>So if everything about this AI boom fails what we'll be left with is a massive amount of abundant renewable energy
Except that someone has to pay for it. AI companies are only willing to pay for power purchase agreements, not capital expenses. Same with the $7T of chip fab. Invest your money in huge capital expenditures and our investors will pay you for it on an annual basis until they get tired of losing money.
Power purchase agreements are what renewables developers use to obtain financing for construction. The contract is collateral. Worst case, the developer might need to be prepared to find a substitute offtaker for the power if a PPA with a gen AI offtaker goes bust (if brought up by whomever is underwriting the financing, if there are debt covenants, etc).
I absolutely support AI companies signing as many PPAs for low carbon energy even if they implode in the future. The PV panels, wind turbines, and potentially stationary storage will already be deployed at that point.
What if it is a 5 gigawatt data center in the middle of nowhere or if the power source is a nuclear reactor or three? Presumably, data centers are paying a premium that other customers aren't willing to pay.
Hard to say with random "what ifs." If we're starting merchant nuclear reactors back up, because they have some life left in them and can be operated safely, I support such an operating model as it pushes high carbon energy out of the generation mix until there is more clean energy on the grid.
Illinois provides subsidies to their nuclear reactors because they are low carbon [1], the federal government is subsidizing Diablo Canyon in California [2] and Palisades in Michigan [3]. Every coal fired generator in the US is more expensive to run than to replace with low carbon renewables except the one in Dry Fork, WY, [4] so subsidies are just arguments, not real economic signals.
TLDR We're kicking the can until we can get more clean energy online, and that ramp rate continues to accelerate [5].
I think you are missing my point. Microsoft signed a 20-year agreement with Constellation to restart TMI Unit 1. Do you think Constellation would make the same agreement with Open AI? The risk is completely different.
No, the point is taken, I think you’re underestimating FOMO and the hype cycle.
If a counterparty is just a bit too rational, move on, lots of other potentials. Markets are sentiment driven. When there is potentially irrational exuberance, leverage it.
Eli Yablonovitch has been working on this for a while. I thought it was assumed that only the lignin would stay sequestered but I'm not finding those details.
I wasn't satisfied with his idea because it assumed that the biomass had to stay dry indefinitely, despite being locked behind an impermeable barrier. It's also not very convenient geographically, because raising crops (at least for low-value types like switchgrass) is not economically viable in the driest areas where they would be stored.
