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1. heyden+82[view] [source] 2025-01-21 22:40:58
>>tedsan+(OP)
~$125B per year would be 2-3% of all domestic investment. It's similar in scale to the GDP of a small middle income country.

If the electric grid — particularly the interconnection queue — is already the bottleneck to data center deployment, is something on this scale even close to possible? If it's a rationalized policy framework (big if!), I would guess there's some major permitting reform announcement coming soon.

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2. ericcu+h3[view] [source] 2025-01-21 22:44:58
>>heyden+82
watching the press conference and Onsite power production were mentioned. I assume this means SMRs and solar.
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3. jazzyj+R7[view] [source] 2025-01-21 23:10:20
>>ericcu+h3
just as likely to be natural gas or a combination of gas and solar. I don't know what supply chain looks like for solar panels, but I know gas can be done quickly [1], which is how this money has to be spent if they want to reach their target of 125 billion a year.

The companies said they will develop land controlled by Wise Asset to provide on-site natural gas power plant solutions that can be quickly deployed to meet demand in the ERCOT.

The two firms are currently working to develop more than 3,000 acres in the Dallas-Fort Worth region of Texas, with availability as soon as 2027

[0] https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/rpower-and-wise-a...

[1.a] https://enchantedrock.com/data-centers/

[1.b] https://www.powermag.com/vistra-in-talks-to-expand-power-for...

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4. toomuc+ii[view] [source] 2025-01-22 00:19:14
>>jazzyj+R7
US domestic PV module manufacturing capacity is ~40GW/year.
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5. dhx+cd1[view] [source] 2025-01-22 08:46:59
>>toomuc+ii
According to [1], the USA in January 2025 has almost 50GW/yr module manufacturing capacity. But to make modules you need polysilicon (25GW/yr manufacturing capacity in the US), ingots (0GW/yr), wafers (0GW/yr), and cells (0GW/yr). Hence the USA is seemingly entirely dependent on imports, probably from China which has 95%+ of the global wafer manufacturing capacity.

Even when accounting for announced capacity expansion, the USA is currently on target to remain a very small player in the global market with announced capacity of 33GW/yr polysilicon, 13GW/yr ingots, 24GW/yr wafers, 49GW/yr cells and 83GW/yr modules (13GW/yr sovereign supply chain limitation).

In 2024, China completed sovereign manufacturing of ~540GW of modules[2] including all precursor polysilicon, ingots, wafers and cells. China also produced and exported polysilicon, ingots, wagers and cells that were surplus to domestic demand. Many factories in China's production chain are operating at half their maximum production capacity due to global demand being less than half of global manufacturing capacity.[3]

[1] https://seia.org/research-resources/solar-storage-supply-cha...

[2] Estimated figure extrapolated from Jan-Oct 2024 data (10 months). https://taiyangnews.info/markets/china-solar-pv-output-10m-2...

[3] https://dialogue.earth/en/business/chinese-solar-manufacture...

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6. toomuc+AM1[view] [source] 2025-01-22 13:45:05
>>dhx+cd1
Appreciate the correction and additional context, I appear to be behind wrt current state.
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