Free electricity!

[Crofter]

Not sure if this has been discussed already but sounds interesting: 

 

https://www.euronews.com/2026/03/27/european-country-vows-to-give-homeowners-free-electricity-instead-of-switching-off-wind-tu

 

In short: UK government is going to trial discounted or free electricity on windy days, in certain areas.

 

Mr Octopus says it's a good start but operating as a trial doesn't give the long term confidence needed to get people to switch to EVs and ASHP.

 

Labour had previously ruled out zonal pricing so I'm not sure why they've changed their minds. But, given I live right next to a large wind farm, it sounds good to me!

[BotusBuild]

Put all the AI data centres near the wind farms.

 

That'll get the NImBY's going 😀 

[SteamyTea]

4 minutes ago, BotusBuild said:

Put all the AI data centres near the wind farms

Can't we use the sea to cool them. It would be nice to go for a dip, without a rubber suit on.

 

I saw something about tokens/watt the other day.

ChatGPT uses about 340 MWh/day for a billion queries.

I am not sure if that is good or bad. It is about 10 times a standard Google search.

[BotusBuild]

Combine the two ideas 👍🏻

[Crofter]

I can't find any other sources for this, no official govt press release anyway.

 

If anybody hears more details on this, please post them here.

[SimonD]

6 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

Can't we use the sea to cool them. It would be nice to go for a dip, without a rubber suit on.

 

A good few years ago Microsoft was running an underwater study for exactly this reason - don't know where it got to but with the size of some of these centres, it would be a bit of a task to make them water proof. I think the tests they ran used units the size of shipping container. However, the massive scaling approach by AI is just one silly choice - it's the whose is bigger the better thing. It is actually possible to run very fast and efficient AI on extremely small installations, which maybe at some point they'll realise it makes more sense and costs less money.