Disregarding many errors in this post, and the gratuitous dig at Kast we have come to expect from the Guardian, there’s anther downside to this topic as featured in this later article from the same place.
As well as the ever-increasing costs of electricity in Chile, a country with a less than robust power infrastructure, combined with a scarcity of the water needed to cool these energy guzzlers, the ill-informed political decisions that led to their establishment is a disaster waiting to happen.
There is a possible solution of sorts, but its one that the greenies managed to kill some years ago: the original HydroAysen project would have added 4GW of capacity to the national grid. Its located an area where there’s an abundance of water and where lower temperatures mean that less data centre cooling would be required.
To continue with the Guardian’s coverage:
“This decision is in line with Bachelet’s new energy agenda prioritizing nonconventional, renewable energy, of which Chile has incredible potential,” says Herrera.
Yes, another Bachelet decision…
A scaled-down version of this project could be built to satisfy the power requirements of these data centres, and whose environmental impact outside the dam area would mainly consist of undersea fibre optic links
Just my 2 cents worth, it’ll probably never happen.