Thread

Oracle on the hook to pay data centre investors even if site has no electricity

158 points · 154 comments · Betelbuddy

peri-cl · 1790334571 · focus · HN ↗
I'm very curious what happens now to the several gigawatts of fuel cells, that this project supposedly purchased to supply power.
> "Oracle signed a deal with solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) developer Bloom last year for 1.8GW of power, expanding it to 2.8GW of capacity in April."
<a href="https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/new-mexico-regulators-reject-natural-gas-pipeline-for-oracles-25gw-project-jupiter-data-center/" rel="nofollow">https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/new-mexico-regula...
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom_Energy" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom_Energy
I was surprised to read we're already building fuel cell power plants on this scale (this is a first of its kind project—by far this startup's largest customer). I didn't realize the tech was that mature. Now I'm left wondering if they actually ever intended to, or whether this was some kind of circular financial-engineering vaporware.
1. Zigurd · 1790347695 · focus · HN ↗
  As far as I can tell Bloom has a working product, but I also couldn't find any examples of Bloom installations that are within two orders of magnitude of the New Mexico data center.
  I think this was motivated by a mixture of greenwashing and financial shenanigans. That much gas turbine capacity has a leadtime of several years now. Nobody knows if Bloom can scale up to match the requirements. I'd bet against it just because the consumables and operations of the Bloom fuel cells is pretty complex and pushing the limits in terms of heat and other parameters.

Open on Hacker News to reply ↗

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.