There will be a movement on social media towards serif fonts as more and more people named Al get annoyed with their name looking like the acronym AI

On Monday I’ll be starting at Google DeepMind as a Visiting Researcher for my sabbatical (Jan-Dec 2025). Looking forward to contributing to solving challenging problems in the AI+Optimization for power systems space!

Makes sense!

That almost answers it. If most of the vars are accounted for locally, then it’s justified to have them rated in Watts

I think so, but it’s still not 1.0 pf, right?

Definitely, but how much? Just a ton of cap banks to cancel out hundreds of VAR from the motors?

As a ballpark, if you have a 1 GW data center (with the rating actually in Watts), where 40% of that is the cooling system, and 80% of the cooling system's energy consumption is AC motor loads, assuming an 80% power factor, that's 100's of MVar unaccounted for, making the effective rating ~1.3 GVA

2) Is it just that there's a lot of reactive power compensation so these motors do not pull VAR from the grid and their effective grid impact can just be expressed in watts?

3) If they are pulling VAr, what's the impact on harmonics with this level of reactive power loads? @xiaowang1984.bsky.social

1) Are the load growth numbers we see for data centers *actually* in MW or is this really MVA? If it's actually MW, the consumption is much higher than we thought (/wire sizing/transformer sizing / etc is much higher)

Data center power ratings in MW vs MVA is a good point made by @agelston.bsky.social .

If ~40% of a data center's energy consumption goes to the cooling system, and a large chunk of the cooling system's consumption is from AC motors, this is a large amount of reactive power. Which raises questions:

I Can Only Count to FOUR - Psychostick Numbers Bodies Drowning Pool Parody YouTube video by Psychostick

love it

she'll learn to count to 4 too!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8cc...

YES! 😍

Once I did just start explaining OPF because I heard it’s good to keep talking to them and I ran out of things to say 😂

One of her swings has some classical music which is probably good because otherwise she’s just listening to pop and metal from me

Well also the compressor motors. Cooling systems have a lot of motors

How do you cool the hot things???

This is the only educational baby song I know so if anyone has other recommendations let me hear them

Boom! PJM now forecasts more than 30GW of summer peak load growth by the end of the decade.

Summer peak demand:
+ 6.7GW by 2026
+ 17.7GW by 2028
+ 31.7GW by 2030

Do AC motors require reactive power?

Do data centers have any motors? 😊

Yes

Need to get some for our cats too…

Kyri Georgia and Bridget’s first Christmas together ❤️

Decided to arrange the stockings in order of age with the exception of Bridget and Georgia which we switched

My middle name is danger.

First name amperage last name voltage, sr. name fire

Duke Energy to knock down coal plant and build its biggest battery yet Large grid batteries are finally coming to North Carolina, the nation’s fourth largest solar power producer.

#EnergySky Duke Energy is demolishing a coal plant and putting batteries in its place - a great example of faster interconnection of new energy resources by utilizing existing grid assets! 💡🔌

(yes, they are also building a new gas plant nearby, but baby steps...)
www.canarymedia.com/articles/bat...

One of the best purchases I’ve ever made though

I love all the guesses but the correct answer is that this is an image of cat litter on a basement floor illuminated by the Dyson V15 Detect, the best vacuum I’ve ever owned

Brownie points for whoever correctly identifies what this image is

Ugh, this is true, and I still haven’t gotten over my love for free food as a tenured professor 😂

Hydro-Quebec sometimes uses helicopter to smash power lines with wooden poles to remove ice and/or snow

Ask @mjjones.bsky.social

Ice on power lines can be melted by temporarily overloading the line. High currents = high heat!