We stumbled upon a story this week that really raised our eyebrows and made us wonder if we were missing something. The gist of the story is that U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, who has degrees in both electrical and mechanical engineering, has floated the idea of using the nation’s fleet of emergency backup generators to reduce the need to build the dozens of new power plants needed to fuel the AI data center building binge. The full story looks to be a Bloomberg exclusive and thus behind a paywall — hey, you don’t get to be a centibillionaire by giving stuff away, you know — so we might be missing some vital details, but this sounds pretty stupid to us.
First of all, saying that 35 gigawatts of generation capacity sits behind the big diesel and natural gas-powered generators tucked behind every Home Depot and Walmart in the land might be technically true, but it seems to ignore the fact that backup generators aren’t engineered to run continuously. In our experience, even the best backup generators are only good for a week or two of continuous operation before something — usually the brushes — gives up the ghost. That’s perfectly acceptable for something that is designed to be operated only a few times a year, and maybe for three or four days tops before grid power is restored. Asking these units to run continuously to provide the base load needed to run a data center is a recipe for rapid failure. And even if these generators could be operated continuously, there’s still the issue of commandeering private property for common use, as well as the fact that you’d be depriving vital facilities like hospitals and fire stations of their backup power. But at least we’d have chatbots.
Well, that won’t buff right out. Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, suffered a serious setback last week when it damaged the launchpad at Site 31/6 during a Soyuz launch. This is bad news because that facility is currently the only one in the world capable of launching Soyuz and Progress, both crucial launch vehicles for the continued operation of the International Space Station. As usual, the best coverage of the accident comes from Scott Manley, who has all the gory details. His sources inform him that the “service cabin,” a 20-ton platform that slides into position under the rocket once it has been erected, is currently situated inside the flame trench rather than being safely tucked into a niche in the wall. He conjectures that the service cabin somehow got sucked into the flame trench during launch, presumably by the negative pressure zone created by the passage of all that high-velocity rocket exhaust. Whatever the cause of the accident, it causes some problems for the Russians and the broader international space community. An uncrewed Progress launch to resupply the ISS was scheduled for December 20, and a crewed Soyuz mission is scheduled for July 2026. But without that service cabin, neither mission seems likely. Hopefully, the Russians will be able to get things tidied up quickly, but it might not matter anyway since there’s currently a bit of a traffic jam at the ISS.
We saw a really nice write-up over at Make: Magazine by Dom Dominici about his impressions from his first Supercon visit. Spoiler alert: he really liked it! He describes it as “an intimate, hands-on gathering that feels more like a hacker summer camp than a tech expo,” and that’s about the best summary of the experience that we’ve seen yet. His reaction to trying to find what he assumed would be a large convention center, but only finding a little hole-in-the-wall behind a pizza place off the main drag in Pasadena, is priceless; yes, that mystery elevator actually goes somewhere. For those of you who still haven’t made the pilgrimage to Pasadena, the article is a great look at what you’re missing.
And finally, we know we were a little rough on the Russians a couple of weeks back for their drunk-walking robot demo hell, but it really served to demonstrate just how hard it is to mimic human walking with a mechanical system. After all, it takes the better part of two years for a new human to even get the basics, and a hell of a lot longer than that to get past the random face-plant stage. But still, some humanoid robots are better than others, to the point that there’s now a Guinness Book of World Records category for longest walk by a humanoid robot. The current record was set last August, with a robot from Shanghai-based Agibot Innovations going on a 106-km walkabout without falling or (apparently) recharging. The journey took place in temperatures approaching 40°C and took 24 hours to complete, which means the robot kept up a pretty brisk walking pace over the course, which we suppose didn’t have any of the usual obstacles.
We just may get that scene in I’Robot (the movie) where the robot is running to deliver that woman’s asthma medicine.
Just because someone is able to afford a cutting-edge tech robot didn’t mean they’ll be able to afford an inhaler.
Regarding Chris Wright:
An unending series of ragebait hoaxes in the media has caused me to go to ground level truth on a lot of issues, and I’ve found that – surprise! – the issues are almost always not what is described and almost always handled in a reasonable manner.
Not to put this on a political basis, but Bloomberg likes to stir up outrage. It’s too “on the nose”, a high level appointee with degrees in mechanical and electrical engineering, but he doesn’t see the flaws in his own proposal… he must be incompetent and it’s just another example of how bad the administration is.
Go to ground level truth. Find out what he actually said, and see if it isn’t reasonable or at least something that we should check into.
I’ve found so many misleading articles in the MSM I don’t even bother looking into these sorts of things any more. The assumption that it’s not true-as-described is usually correct.
(Local news of an incident is usually a pretty good source, they report what happened and pride themselves on accuracy. Supreme court decisions are very readable, you can find out not only what their decision was, but why they made that decision. Most court documents are an easy read as well. Beyond that, I recommend going to the actual interview and listen to what was actually said, or read what they actually wrote.)
Nicely said.
Chris Wright seems to have uttered this bit of stupidity at the North American Gas Forum. As a way to lower electricity costs. They would of course love it since they could sell more natural gas.
When your job depends on your not understanding something…
Peter Zeihan notes that with the shale revolution, natural gas is essentially free.
Not completely, there’s still pumping and delivery, but right now we have so much natural gas that we have to burn off excess gas produced as a byproduct of oil drilling.
I’m not sure what I’m not understanding, but it looks like using more gas (as opposed to, for example coal) would be a good thing.
Just don’t mind the fact that the fumes will do us in.
“Shale revolution” largely failed to deliver any results locally where it was invented, in the northeast US. The price of heating gas went UP, not down, and HAS BEEN going up ever since.
IT must be making Big Bucks somewhere else, but certainly nowhere near where I live. We do have PA gas reserves, but those seem to suck in all my tax money and still go up in price regardless.
I’ve long jokes that from the price of average natural gas “delivery fee” (which is ON THE TOP of the tax-paid maintenance costs), it seems that our local reserves are first liquefied and shipped to Oman (or Qatar, or even China for that matter), where they are pumped into gazillion tiny 20lb containers, then shipped back to PA, where those gazillion containers are connected to gazillion tiny gas pipes, which are, at the end, connected to the tax-paid pipeline, from which it is then “delivered” to the house I live in. I won’t be surprised if it is also mixed with the Oman’s own natural gas reserves (or russian, or chinese, doesn’t matter) before being shipped back to PA.
Well, you won’t find out WHY they made the decision but you can read what they SAID was their reasoning. In the current subprime court those could be very different. Assume it’s subterfuge and you’ll probably be correct.
There WERE successful (though, unpiloted) launches of Soyuzes from French Guyana, they even built a separate launch pad, and added their own launch control room, both of which were briefly used for cargo launches.
Things went decidedly cold war with ESA suddenly falling out of favor with moscow, who went back to Baykonur instead – I think they offered cashload of bribes lest US builds a military base somewhere near – I am serious, there WERE talks about such things in the early 2000s, and you can guess the feeble US politician who had all but chickened out. They could have flown to Baykonur all kinds of US military stuffs straight out of Qatar, back then it was a safe flight route over Iran, and Qatar was actually actively preparing for such a thing to happen soon, expanding US presence, logistics and infrastructure, etc.
(I also honestly have no idea HOW moscow convinced Kazakhstan to stop pretending they need any kind of compensation for all the toxic stuff strewn all over old and destroyed launching pads – 1960 Nedelin Catastrophe? 1969 N1 moon rocket? plenty more in that same area, just zoom in in google maps).
Update – since I don’t closely follow all the rocket-launching global news closely, I missed this (not my hobby anyway, just something I run across more than few times).
Centre Spatial Guyanais (CSG) in Kourou, French Guiana, has been launching repackaged Soyuzes until 2022. Last time I spoke with someone who was following THOSE news closely was in 2012 or 2014, so I am full decade behind the latest, and I apologize.
What I do know that the Soyuz launchpad is separate from those launching Vegas and Arianes, since Soyuz is smaller. I also know that the incumbent is being challenged by more than few competitors, all using things that are cheaper and in some ways superior to the modern Soyuz complexes.
Though, I give Soyuz engineers credit for inventing and implementing ISS approach trip in 6 hrs (though, the last record was 3 hours) instead of the “usual 48 hours needed”. I’ll have to dig more details on that part, but it remains to be seen if SpaceX is up for challenge to outdo the 3 hours record (last I checked their “standard” automated human flight is around 16 hours or more).
I enjoyed article at the Makezine link that you dropped above, Dan. Thanks for posting! It’s a long way from me, but if Elliot can make it maybe I can someday. :)
The Chinese Agibot did not need to stop to recharge… because– it picked up new fully charged battery packs along the way, swapping them out itself. Cool solution!
Aside from the issues with fuel / pollution, backup generators are not grid-tied – their use case is to provide power when the grid is down and must be isolated from the grid for safety reasons. To connect them to the grid you’d at a minimum need to install equipment to synchronize their phase to the grid.