I thought they where using commercial off the shelf generators?

A great video on the issue:

How could we have known, that putting the people making the profit in charge of regulation would lead to this!? /s

The picture is a heat signature. Obviously heat is released. But why would it release pollution as methane? They are just cooling computers.

"But through the lens of Wilson’s optical gas imaging camera, a scientific instrument that is used within the oil and gas industry and by regulators to detect methane emissions, the pollution becomes readily apparent. Huge, billowing plumes of pollution, including large volumes of unburned methane, rise into the atmosphere and drift off-site."

Have you read the article at all?

When building a data center why wouldn't you secure the required electricity and water before committing to a site?

I did read that now. But why would it release methane at all? They are cooling computers. Methane is a terrible heat conducting gas last I checked.

Why would capitalists give a fuck about any constraint? We've conditioned them for a century to believe they can do anything they want with impunity.

Direct quote from the article:

Having difficulty securing enough grid power to fuel the energy-hungry data center, xAI brought in 35 portable gas turbines , and assembled them without environmental permits or pollution controls.

Looks like it's not just cooling that they're doing there. The link in the quote leads to an article describing the data centre's new turbines, specifically referring to them as methane gas turbines.

I skimmed that article briefly and I don't think it points out the mechanism by which these turbines work - if it does, I must've missed it. I did however see a line that said the turbines also release formaldehyde during operation.

Methane in this case seems to me to either be a byproduct of power generation or unused fuel somehow leaking from the system. I have no clue how gas turbines work, so I'm talking out of my ass here. In any case this seems to be the source of the methane emissions.

The power companies demanded guarantees, so they wouldn't be on the hook for investing in infrastructure and power generation if the whole hype disappeared the next month. Tech bros then went "how can we do it quick and dirty when we can't get others to pay for it?"

They’re running generators to power the data centre. Apparently they’re incredibly inefficient if they’re releasing methane

the heat signature is showing the hot methane billowing out of the generators he’s running to power grok.

also he’s using drinking water from the memphis sands aquifer to cool the computers. not greywater, not river water, but clean aquifer water.

please don’t use grok.

• ️memphis.

Typically.

This is Musk's AI project though, he's not going to wait to secure power or permits or environmental impact studies or anything like that...

Did Jenson deliver the G100s? Grab some generators and get pumping.

They are using portable generators only intended for short term usage in an emergency. One of the tradeoffs of being portable is that the generators are unable to combust the natural gas "cleanly"(under sufficient temperature and with enough oxygen, resulting in this ideal reaction: CH4 + 2 O2 -> 2 H2O + CO2), leading to incomplete reactions releasing many pollutants, most of which are at least suspected of causing cancer. This is acceptable in an emergency but not if some narcist runs them in a population center without proper permission to feed his horribly inefficient model in an attempt to keep up with other AI labs.

"Nonono! It's, uuh... it's like fairy dust, but from the AI!"

This article and what they are doing feels fishy, for a few reasons.

• Data centers usually have steam plumes, but only with older cooling systems, newer designs dont vent off nearly as much water vapor and even newer designs have liquid-to-chip, and im not sure how those vent the heat, but its definitly not venting their treated coolant+water. (Because that would be dumb and expensive, but that seems to be the flavor of the day, so lets roll with that)

• If the building was not designed by a monkey, then this is likely just a generator test. I want to put the emphasis on "TEST" because a data center only runs its very inefficent generators when utility power fails. (They will generate exaust, but usually its diesle generators or something with cheap fuel). Fancy gas turbines sounds very "extra" because the reason that deisle generators are used is that they can turn on and hold the load of the building quickly (and the building should have a battery bank to hold that for exactly what ever that time is)

To me, one of two things is wrong, either the camera is just imaging thermals and thats a normal steam plume and they are being sensationalist. OR (and more likely answer). Musk is building some bespoke data center in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere without the local infrastructure to support it and is doing all sorts of expensive additions to make it do what it would be able to if it was clustered with other data centers that share utilitites.

Methane is what the majority of natural gas is made up of, and if your generator isn't made to be very efficient (like a real power station is), you'll lose some of your fuel unburnt into the atmosphere.

Kinda like unburnt wood smoke vapour, which could have been burned in a higher quality wood burner, but just goes up the chimney in an open fire.