I can only imagine. Most major industrial loads have long ramp up/down times as processes warm up, motors get to speed, and processed material gradually runs farther down line. Generally there’s some coordination between major industrial users and power companies to also manage bringing loads on-line.
Data centers are 100% switched power supplies and can go from 0 to 100% in less than a second. The grid physically doesn’t have enough inertia to absorb load spikes like that- and then when it unloads, the grid can massively overshoot.
But conversely it means it’s theoretically quite easy to fix: have energy storage at data centers so that unloading can result in the centre charging the storage while sending a message to the grid announcing its needs are decreasing. Then gradually decrease the load.
In a functioning system, anyone connecting a large site to the grid would need to sign a contract about how they’ll use power which would include these provisions, and a contract without them would cost far more.
I can only imagine. Most major industrial loads have long ramp up/down times as processes warm up, motors get to speed, and processed material gradually runs farther down line. Generally there’s some coordination between major industrial users and power companies to also manage bringing loads on-line. Data centers are 100% switched power supplies and can go from 0 to 100% in less than a second. The grid physically doesn’t have enough inertia to absorb load spikes like that- and then when it unloads, the grid can massively overshoot.
But conversely it means it’s theoretically quite easy to fix: have energy storage at data centers so that unloading can result in the centre charging the storage while sending a message to the grid announcing its needs are decreasing. Then gradually decrease the load.
Correct! But that costs money to build. Why do that when you could offload the consequences to someone else?
In a functioning system, anyone connecting a large site to the grid would need to sign a contract about how they’ll use power which would include these provisions, and a contract without them would cost far more.