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by perbu16 hours ago |
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upvoteby seanmcdirmid14 hours ago|
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I think this is really a rosy image of China’s electrify situation. They have huge needs in the east and green energy in the west, they can’t build their UHV links fast enough. They are doing ok at keeping up, but there isn’t a surplus of cheap electricity lying around in the same places where you have cheap water as well.
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upvoteby victorbjorklund12 hours ago|
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What is stopping them from just building their data centers in the west where they have energy surplus? Not like you need to locate a data center inside a city.
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upvoteby seanmcdirmid12 hours ago|
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Water. The west is really dry. We could throw in data lines as well but it’s really bottlenecked by water. Actually the only place in China with water in abundance is southeast China.

Also they really don’t have the chips to supply those data centers, and the government isn’t so crazy to go that aggressive on AI, they have lots of other priorities as well.

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upvoteby alightsoul4 hours ago|
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Chinese data centers like to use air cooled chillers for cooling, not evaporative coolers. It's simple because power for the chillers is cheaper than water for the evaporative coolers. The opposite is true in the US
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upvoteby ricardobeat5 hours ago|
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Evaporative cooling is a matter of convenience and cost, not a necessity. Other cooling technologies can be used. Intel has already proven a closed-loop system can work just as well.
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upvoteby HarHarVeryFunny6 hours ago|
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One of China's big sources of power is hydroelectric such as the Three Gorges Dam, so if you want electricity and water in one place, then there it is.
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upvoteby vinaigrette6 hours ago|
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I wonder if submerged system with coolant could mitigate this ?
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upvoteby dalemhurley15 hours ago|
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There is economic benefits of the cost per a lumen continuously coming down.
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upvoteby hobofan15 hours ago|
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The US also isn't energy-limited. They'll just price out all humans living there from buying any electricity.

EDIT: This was obviously meant to be facetious with the intent to highlight the negative effects on the general population that datacenter buildout has in the US.

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upvoteby Barbing15 hours ago|
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USA vs. China energy production graph is wild https://stanfordreview.org/content/images/2025/10/us_china_p...

States have had trouble delivering expected EV charging capacity btw

Why aren’t we considered energy limited?

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upvoteby yorwba9 hours ago|
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That graph features a completely-made-up superexponential AI growth curve coincidentally reaching 100% of US electricity generation in 2030, but even if you take the prediction up to 2026 at face value, it also agrees that AI is currently a small fraction of overall demand. Of course any individual data center site might struggle with insufficient local supply, but China would have the same problem if they wanted to build bigger data centers. (Production capacity is actually north of 25 000 TWh, but poorly utilized because of a mismatch in place and time between producers and consumers.)
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upvoteby 14 hours ago|
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upvoteby Mashimo14 hours ago|
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> The US also isn't energy-limited.

I have not looked into it, but I have heard a lot of new data center have to run on site gas turbine on trailers to have enough power.

If the US is not energy limited, why they do that?

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upvoteby Barbing6 hours ago|
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See your edit, got it :)
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upvoteby wickedsight14 hours ago|
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> but the need of the many come first.

The need of the rich, you mean. In these kinds of situations it's never about the many, if it was about them different choices would be made.

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