Decided to run my ebikes on solar

[scrambler]

It will help once data centers are moved out into space

Data centers currently consume approximately
4.4% to 4.5% of total U.S. electricity as of early 2026, driven largely by the rise of artificial intelligence. This usage is rapidly increasing from roughly 1.9% in 2018, with projections estimating that data centers could account for 6.7% to 12% of total U.S. power demand by 2028

Yeah but there are a lot of hurdles to overcome, heat dissipation being a huge one.... and of course maintenance....

 

[usclassic]

Yeah but there are a lot of hurdles to overcome, heat dissipation being a huge one.... and of course maintenance....

Maintenance yes but chips are reliable after the burn in period which they will do on earth but space is cold and cooling is free there. No water needed.

 

[usclassic]

SpaceX will get them there pretty soon.

 

[Chargeride]

Starlink sats burn up constantly, they just keep sending up more, they only last five years, two of them deorbit every day

 

[stompandgo]

It will help once data centers are moved out into space

Data centers currently consume approximately
4.4% to 4.5% of total U.S. electricity as of early 2026, driven largely by the rise of artificial intelligence. This usage is rapidly increasing from roughly 1.9% in 2018, with projections estimating that data centers could account for 6.7% to 12% of total U.S. power demand by 2028

They need to either be responsible for generating their own electricity, with surplus going to the grid, or off the grid entirely. This situation is already out of control, and it just started, with no end in sight.

 

[scrambler]

but space is cold and cooling is free there. No water needed.

Unfortunately NOT, space is a perfect vaccum so getting rid of heat is VERY HARD (no convection, no conduction nothing to take the heat), it acts as a thermos on satellites....

 

[scrambler]

They need to either be responsible for generating their own electricity, with surplus going to the grid, or off the grid entirely. This situation is already out of control, and it just started, with no end in sight.

Data centers and crypto are becoming the two biggest threats to our never ending ever increasing energy consumption

 

[stompandgo]

Data centers have always eaten power. Once corporations started migrating their business applications and data to the cloud, everything ramped up. Crypto mining has always used the same GPU's as AI, but the "datacenters" were distributed all over the world. Still a lot of power, but spread out. Building datacenters exclusively for AI is concentrating the power crush into your neighborhood. That's the problem. Every grid is not the same. AI datacenters should never be located in major metropolitan areas without their own power source, but they are, because stupid politicians think that they will be good for the economy and bring hundreds of jobs. During construction, maybe. After getting their CO, a dozen or two at most.

 

[usclassic]

Unfortunately NOT, space is a perfect vaccum so getting rid of heat is VERY HARD (no convection, no conduction nothing to take the heat), it acts as a thermos on satellites....

Cooling a space-based data center in a vacuum requires
using large radiators to radiate waste heat as infrared light, as convection is impossible. The primary solution involves mechanical pump fluid loops (MPFL) circulating liquids to transfer heat from computing hardware to external panels located in the shade

Key Cooling Strategies:

• Radiative Cooling (Primary): Since vacuum is an insulator that prevents convection, all heat must be radiated away. Spacecraft use large radiator panels that act as heat sinks to discharge heat into the -270 degree void.
• 
  Mechanical Pump Fluid Loops (MPFL): A mature, standard technology where a pump drives coolant to cold plates directly installed on high-power NVIDIA H100 GPUs or other processors, removing heat directly from the source.
• Massive Radiator Surface Area: Due to radiation being less efficient than terrestrial cooling, large-scale orbital data centers require massive radiator arrays to handle high heat loads.
• Heat Pipes and Thermal Materials: These passive systems are utilized to transport heat from the chips to the radiators.
• Managing Thermal Cycling: To avoid overheating, the data center or its radiators may need to be oriented in the shadow of the structure or Earth to avoid direct sunlight