The irony is, given the UK's single energy market and the bottlenecks moving that energy down from Scotland, building datacenters further south will push up Scotland's energy prices as well, more so than if they were built locally.
They're a large, mostly well-behaved grid load which lets you spread fixed costs over more units of electricity.
The problems start when they are being built by well connected entities that can leverage their power to simply demand that other people pay more to give them a discount.
Very similar to the shopping around factories do. Usually a factory brings jobs and other good stuff, but you don't get the factory unless you do X, Y and Z in competition with all the other possible locations. That can lead to a winners curse where you're effectively subsidizing the factory and losing out overall if you "win" the auction.
More difficult to built, more difficult to get permission, ironically, and presumably the datacenters are planning to employ some people so they'll want to live at least somewhat nearby.
but since they have so many objection now. learn from china's approch? https://japantoday.com/category/tech/china-goes-rural-with-d... (from what i learned it should be build datacents far away -> attract people to work nearby, not the other way around)
even it cost more, but still better thant the current situation?
The irony is, given the UK's single energy market and the bottlenecks moving that energy down from Scotland, building datacenters further south will push up Scotland's energy prices as well, more so than if they were built locally.
Datacentres can in theory reduce bills.
They're a large, mostly well-behaved grid load which lets you spread fixed costs over more units of electricity.
The problems start when they are being built by well connected entities that can leverage their power to simply demand that other people pay more to give them a discount.
Very similar to the shopping around factories do. Usually a factory brings jobs and other good stuff, but you don't get the factory unless you do X, Y and Z in competition with all the other possible locations. That can lead to a winners curse where you're effectively subsidizing the factory and losing out overall if you "win" the auction.
And yet here we are, still subsidizing steelworks in England, and Scottish people are paying the cost in their electricity bills.
Scotland's abundant local energy resources should be spent on things that actually benefit Scotland and provide jobs.
Which counteracts with the EU's desire to have any kind of sovereign AI. Guess you have to lose something if you want to earn something...
Scotland is not a member of the EU since brexit.
They raise your electricity costs and employ relatively few people and send the profits elsewhere.
I think we can just call them AI surveillance centers. This isn't the usual fare anymore.
why dont they build the datacenters far away from people/village/towns?
More difficult to built, more difficult to get permission, ironically, and presumably the datacenters are planning to employ some people so they'll want to live at least somewhat nearby.
but since they have so many objection now. learn from china's approch? https://japantoday.com/category/tech/china-goes-rural-with-d... (from what i learned it should be build datacents far away -> attract people to work nearby, not the other way around)
even it cost more, but still better thant the current situation?
Too easy to destroy if they're outside of population centers - soon they'll be building them under hospitals and orphanages