Utility Firms Go Nuclear over Amazon Datacenter Power Deal

17 points by m463 3 months ago | 4 comments

BMc2020 3 months ago |
The duo claim Talen and Amazon are basically getting a free ride that other PJM ratepayers will have to pay for, saying that even though Amazon's datacenter isn't directly connected to PJM, it still benefits from the power grid, meaning the other ratepayers are left holding the short end of the stick.
AdamJacobMuller 3 months ago |
> Each of the station's two reactors has 1,350 MW available, and Amazon is already able to use 480 MW, and up to 960 MW in the future. If one of the reactors experiences an outage, the ISA says the datacenter is first in line for power from the other reactor, which leaves PJM with far less electricity than normal. That in turn would mean a lower energy supply for PJM's customers, who would have to pay more, at least according to the complaint's reasoning.
> The Talen-PJM ISA states that in this event, the nuclear datacenter will separate from the plant and get its power elsewhere, but AEP and Exelon are skeptical and want to know how exactly that would work.
This seems fairly simple for Amazon/Talen to answer, if they have a good answer for it.
"we are also installing 960MW of Diesel generators"
"this datacenter is 95% spot capacity and we will just EPO that if we lose power"
Lots of options. Simple to answer.
pests 3 months ago |
This might be relevant:
> According to the complaint, the new ISA doesn't permit the nuclear plant to have automatically running backup power generation, which is fine for planned outages, but not so much for unexpected ones. In that case, the datacenter would apparently be able to use power from the other nuclear reactor as a form of backup.
AdamJacobMuller 3 months ago |
This is a bit confusing to me for a few reasons but makes sense if they meant "the datacenter" instead of "the nuclear plant"
Why would the datacenter care (w/r/t the ISA) if the nuclear plant had backup generation?
Moreover, the nuclear plant MUST have backup power because in the event of a grid failure causing a shutdown, the cooling pumps must continue to run for a specific period of time.
Modern reactor designs have made it so that reactors don't need as much cooling, or for as long, and can even use waste heat from the reactor for that purpose, or have designed things such that even without active cooling they "fail" in a safe way but none of these are good and a reactor needs backup power. No way the NRC or any sane designer/operator would allow a reactor without it.
If they are talking about the datacenter not being allowed to have "automatically running backup power generation" this still seems very odd to me. Why would the nuclear plant operators care if the datacenter has generators or not? It won't materially impact the amount of energy they buy and as long as the plants can supply power to the datacenter (regardless of which reactor its from) they won't even notice or care about it.
The whole situation seems unnecessarily obfuscated to me and it's very hard to see if it's a case of PJM being annoyed that this load will bypass their grid and therefore bypass their "tax" on it, or, a case where Talen and Amazon are trying to pull a fast one by relying on the grid without paying their fair share of grid costs.