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Posted by cdrnsf 1 day ago

Chevron signs 20-year power agreement with Microsoft for West Texas data center(www.chevron.com)
150 points | 156 commentspage 2
ck2 1 day ago|
With all the fracking in the USA, literally exponential growth, one of the things they do is gas burn off for months, sometimes years at all the sites

Why not use all that wasted heat energy to power all these datacenters?

(and why not build the datacenters at the Bakken formation)

You can see the burnoff from SPACE and it's for months at a time at each location, tell me that does nothing to global temperatures?

(look at the date on these photos, two decades of burnoff wasted energy)

* https://www.cnbc.com/2013/01/28/shale-gas-boom-now-visible-f...

* https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/at-night-giant-fie...

NDlurker 21 hours ago||
We're getting a data center just north of Fargo, on the other side of the state from all the oil. I agree with you, not sure why they don't build out west instead.

Pretty sure the flares aren't anything like that anymore because some regulations changed where they can't flare so much, but yeah that was a crazy time period.

iAMkenough 1 day ago||
> Why not use all that wasted heat energy to power all these datacenters?

Probably not profitable enough to set up the infrastructure to capture, store, transport, and sell that as a product. Profit potential is the only factor that matters to decision makers.

Symbiote 1 day ago||
Search "datacentre district heat Denmark" and you'll find several examples, such as Facebook's datacentre in Odense.

Or one in Copenhagen, I didn't realize some small amount of my hot water (and heating in the winter) came from a datacentre. Neat.

iAMkenough 1 day ago||
That makes sense for existing infrastructure, taking waste heat from data centers and piping it through existing public systems. Especially for government environments like Denmark.

I wonder what profits would need to be for a private energy company to install additional equipment at a remote fracking site to capture the burn off energy to then sell to a data center to then use.

Symbiote 7 hours ago||
The problem is finding a well-located user of the waste heat. Homes and offices are great in colder countries. Some industry can use it, but the examples I can think of (food/drink, heat for drying paint, making paper, some chemical/drug processes) aren't usually sited in the middle of nowhere.
ETH_start 18 hours ago||
I think one of the highest-leverage U.S. economic strategies right now is to maximize the upside from the AI data-center boom.

That means reducing any bottlenecks around not just data-center construction, but also adjacent industries like power generation and transmission.

If the U.S. can scale the infrastructure around AI faster than other countries, it can gain a decisive economies of scale advantage in numerous industries that could lead to export boom.

foo42 10 hours ago|
When you say "it", I suspect it will pan out to American Elites, as opposed to America the nation, or Americans the people.
ETH_start 2 hours ago||
If you look at countries that have experienced export booms, you see broad-based wage gains correlated with it.
egorfine 14 hours ago||
So we should expect even more AI bullshit in Windows 12.
jeffbee 1 day ago||
I had to go read the article to check because other operators have been entering into PPAs with oil companies, but for photovoltaic power. E.g. Google and TotalEnergies.

https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2026/02/09/totalenergies-signs-1...

Also Google and itself. I guess there's a difference between Google and Microsoft after all.

https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-uniblog-publish-prod/doc...

yobid20 16 hours ago||
chevron 6 is locked in place
theredleft 1 day ago||
lol no way it lasts that long
jocelyner 21 hours ago||
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flixspiek 1 day ago||
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1-6 1 day ago||
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ZebulonP 1 day ago||
Yeah, why would a governor be proud of pushing out two things that are unpopular with his constituents...
gnerd00 1 day ago|||
Newsom aside, the idea is to change from oil to non-oil, efficient from mono-industrial.. The US Oil minions claim to be blind to this and cite quarterly profits, again
nba456_ 1 day ago||
Then why does Texas install more solar?
undersuit 1 day ago||
Cause California is #2 in that stat.
cdrnsf 1 day ago||
Good riddance to both.
jambalaya8 1 day ago||
yeah. good riddance to east texas also.
whalesalad 1 day ago|
> A majority of the generation will come from large GE Vernova turbines and associated electrical infrastructure, with additional capacity provided by Solar Turbines, a wholly owned subsidiary of Caterpillar Inc.

Solar turbines is an interesting name for a gas turbine company. "It's green energy, we put solar in our name"

infecto 1 day ago||
Quick search shows the reason is nothing to do with your sarcasm.

Its origin is traced back to a 1929 company, Solar Aircraft Company.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Turbines

oasisbob 1 day ago|||
How is this sarcasm? I had almost the exact same thought in earnest: A gas turbine company being called Solar Turbines is quite interesting and unexpected if you're not familiar with that particular corporate history.
infecto 1 day ago||
Not sure why it would be so contentious. I simply provided a reference to the why instead of commenting with a joke, sarcasm or whatever you feel like calling it.
Kayou 1 day ago|||
I agree with OP that the name, while maybe not deliberately, is really confusing in 2026. I thought that was a wind turbines or a solar panel technology, definitely not gas.
infecto 1 day ago||
And it takes all of 30seconds to look up instead of posting sarcastic hyperbole that the company is trying to greenwash their product by name when it’s a 100 year old company name.

Confusing as it may be for people like yourself, I don’t think it really defends posting sarcasm that is not based in reality.

whalesalad 1 day ago|||
I didn't really think it was greenwashing, just hilarious to have one of the largest gas turbine companies in the world named "solar turbines"
infecto 1 day ago||
> "It's green energy, we put solar in our name"

You can call this whatever you want.

skupig 1 day ago||
We call them "jokes"
anon7725 1 day ago|||
It's 2026 - they should change their fucking name.
esseph 1 day ago||
How did that work out for X? I mean, Twitter. Or Meta? You mean Facebook?

Name recognition matters especially to people in particular segments.

thelastgallon 1 day ago|||
Solar Turbines is one of the world's leading manufacturers of industrial gas turbines, with more than 17,000 installed in 100 countries
tokai 1 day ago||
Much like that scoundrel Aurelian reviving the cult of Sol Invictus to greenwash the late roman empire. /s