> that means 10MW of other loads on the grid were not powered by green energy, or 10MW of non-green power sources likely could have been throttled down/shut down.
No. Renewable energy capacity is often built out specifically for datacenters.
> Even if they install solar on the roofs and wind turbines nearby - that's still electrical generation capacity that could have been used for existing loads.
No. This capacity would never never have been built out to begin with if it was not for the data center.
> By buying so many solar panels in such quantities, they affect availability and pricing of all those components.
No. Renewable energy gets cheaper with scale, not more expensive.
> which means in a year they're selling enough chips to use 700MW of power.
There are contracts for renewal capacity to be built out or well into the gigawatts. Furthermore, solar is not the only source of renewable energy. Finally, nuclear energy is also often used.
> No. Renewable energy capacity is often built out specifically for datacenters
Not fully accurate. Indeed there is renewable energy that is produced exclusively for the datacenter. But it is challenging to rely only on renewable energy (because it is intermittent and electricity is hard to store at scale so often you need to consume electricity when produced). So what happens in practice is that the electricity that does not come from dedicated renewable capacity is coming from the grid/network. What companies do is that they invest in renewable capacity in the network so that "the non renewable energy that they consume at time t (because not enough renewable energy available at that moment) is offsetted by someone else consuming renewable energy later". What I am saying here is not pure speculation, look at the link to meta website, they are saying themselves that this is what they are doing
No. Renewable energy capacity is often built out specifically for datacenters.
> Even if they install solar on the roofs and wind turbines nearby - that's still electrical generation capacity that could have been used for existing loads.
No. This capacity would never never have been built out to begin with if it was not for the data center.
> By buying so many solar panels in such quantities, they affect availability and pricing of all those components.
No. Renewable energy gets cheaper with scale, not more expensive.
> which means in a year they're selling enough chips to use 700MW of power.
There are contracts for renewal capacity to be built out or well into the gigawatts. Furthermore, solar is not the only source of renewable energy. Finally, nuclear energy is also often used.
> the IC industry uses a massive amount of water
A figurative drop in the bucket.
> It's hilarious how HN will wring its hands
HN is not a monolith.