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mahina

(20,082 posts)
17. I listened to a couple of great episodes of Watt It Takes last night that opened my eyes. Also, nice try but North Korea
Mon Sep 29, 2025, 02:33 PM
Monday

Would like their propaganda minister back.
Some pretty interesting info related to data centers, energy and the political mess of the time we are in. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/watt-it-takes/id1554962073

Blurb on #1
“As we’ve covered in other recent episodes, the growth of data centers and the massive amount of power they require is reshaping the energy landscape. Today, I want to zero in on a specific challenge at the heart of it all: the watt bit spread, a phrase coined by this month’s guest. 
The Watt Bit Spread is the gap between the cost of electricity and the value of computing—computing meaning, the processing power behind AI, cloud services, and digital infrastructure. Bridging that gap is one of the keys to unlocking both data center growth and new power generation.
Despite countless developers' promises of abundant “powered land,” very few can deliver what data centers and other energy-intensive industries actually need. It’s not just certainty of power timelines but also land, utility agreements, capital, and community support — all critical to reducing the constraints that make the watt bit spread so persistent. Too often, there’s a disconnect between real estate and utilities. Some companies know how to acquire land. Others know how to work with utilities. But rarely both. And even when those pieces come together, projects can still be stalled without community support, labor, or equipment. 
That’s where Brian Janous, Co-Founder and CCO of Cloverleaf Infrastructure, comes in—working to bridge the watt bit spread by aligning land, power, and communities to meet the surging demand for computing. Put simply, Cloverleaf buys land in dollars per acre and sells it in dollars per megawatt.”

And on #2
“The U.S. power sector serves more than 160 million electricity customers—across homes, businesses, and factories in all 50 states. But the grid that supplies that electricity wasn’t designed for the world we live in now, let alone the one that’s coming.
Electrification is accelerating. Data centers—driven by the explosive growth of AI—are demanding more power than ever, often in places where the grid is already strained. And while decarbonization remains technically optional—for those serious about resilience, sustainability, and long term viability, it’s a necessity. These three forces—electrification, digitization, and decarbonization—are colliding, reshaping how our energy system works and who it’s built for.
The challenge isn’t just technical. It’s structural. We are moving towards a world of abundant clean electricity—but too often, it’s available at the wrong time, or in the wrong place. Permitting and interconnection can add years of delays. And even when approved, major transmission projects often take decades to complete, if they manage to get built at all. And many of the rules that govern our electricity markets weren’t built for flexibility, speed, or innovation.
So what if we didn’t wait for the system to catch up? What if we reimagined where clean power is built, who it serves, and how it’s delivered? What if gigawatt-scale clean energy projects were already breaking ground—designed to power data centers, industrial loads, and the digital infrastructure reshaping our world?
That’s exactly what Sheldon Kimber, Co‑Founder and CEO of Intersect Power, is doing: imagining a better energy future, and then building it—faster than anyone thought possible.“
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/watt-it-takes/id1554962073

Sheldom Kimer said something that Iʻve been thinking about. “You wonʻt find a political solution to a societal problem.”

That is debatable. Maybe not a solution but certainly multiple solutions to individual societal problems are within reach. So on that I disagree.
Otherwise, it was astonishing. Both of them were.

We will now resume pretending that Donald Trump is the real President of the United States and has control over anything. I’d sure like to know who is running the show- not just Leo and Heritage, Thiel, Miller, Ellison and I believe, Putin. I mean as individuals

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