The largest Cummins generator kicks out 3.5 MW. Even with battery backup, data centers have generator sets to keep AI humming when the lights go out.
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It would seem that if the Cummins 100kW generators are too small then the Saticoy battery system (100MW) would also be too small.
DB2
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The data centers themselves need cooling, not just the power plants. I haven’t seen anything official about what the water demand is going to be.
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Well that is news to me. Please provide a link to this info.
https://www.cummins.com/en-na/generators/products/qsk95
And I should mention, CAT and Generac also produce high capacity generators for data centers. If you look at their stock price, they’re also makin’ it rain!
There is no one answer to the cooling needs of a data center. It depends on what and how much electronics are in the data center how much heat do they generate. When data that is known, then one needs to know the ambient air conditions 24/7/365 to determine how best to remove the heat from the data center. Air cooling, water cooling, or chillers cooling. Then there is an option of waste heat recovery for use outside the data center. The link below provides some details on how to determine the heat load of a data center.
You forgot too tell us why the Saticoy battery system would be too small.
I would think the people developing the data center would have a good idea what the answer is.
The point is that Gov. Cox is both promoting a data center campus and associated natural gas generation which will consume an unknown amount of water and encouraging residents to reduce water use due to critically low reservoir storage.
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I saw an article the other day about locating the DCs in the ocean. I didn’t read the article but it sounds like a solution for the cooling. Surely it would be cheaper than space.
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how about we just frickin quit building data centers?
nah, lets ruin the only planet we have. no wonder people aren’t having kids any more.
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Finnish power systems firm Wärtsilä has signed a deal with an unnamed data center developer to deliver 507MW of natural gas-powered generators for its new data center site in the US.
The company will supply the data center with 27 of its Wärtsilä 50SG flexible engines with deliveries expected to start in 2027. The order was booked under Wärtsilä’s order intake in Q4 2025.
According to the company, the engines were chosen ahead of alternative technologies due to their ability to operate at full capacity even at 100°F (37.8°C) and their low plant emissions.
“Our off-grid solutions eliminate lengthy grid connection delays and also provide many other intrinsic benefits. Wärtsilä’s modular engine power plants ensure high power availability even during maintenance, and they ramp up quickly to meet fluctuating power demands,” said Anders Lindberg, president of Wärtsilä Energy.
“The plants scale up in capacity fast as data centers grow and operate efficiently, also in the most demanding environments, using significantly less fuel and water than other technologies. These strengths make Wärtsilä’s solutions an ideal choice for cost-effective, resilient, and future-ready data centers.”
This is not Wärtsilä’s first foray into the data center market. It has previously partnered with critical power firm AVK and Rolls-Royce Power Systems in Ireland to develop a microgrid system to power a data center. Under the agreement, AVK designed and installed on-site natural gas power generation, with Wärtsilä providing the engineered equipment and maintenance support.
Based out of Helsinki, Finland, Wärtsilä is one of Europe’s largest power systems providers. The company has a global footprint of around 79GW of power capacity, with 6GW within the US market.
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Because it it the same size as the 100kW Cummins generator that you said was too small.
DB2
You have a reading comprehension problem. 100kW does not equal 100MW.
My bad. Call it an eye typo.
DB2
I don’t really believe that it is critical yet. That’s because the golf courses in SLC are still operating normally. If you can consume massive amounts of water on a mere game then obviously the situation isn’t yet truly critical.
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Not sure ‘mere game’ is correct. This is a significant business sector. And most newer golf courses are far more responsible with their water needs compared with past practices. And you seem to miss the point; ‘not critical yet’ means you should be doing something now so that it does not become critical ever! Or would you rather wait until there isn’t any water to distribute and then make your decisions?
JimA
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But the Trump Admin believes that is woke, environmental scam.
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I did not miss the point. But I didn’t make my point well enough because I used sarcasm to do it.
The writer states that the reservoir IS critically low and therefore the governor supporting a data center is a bad idea. So I sarcastically said “it can’t be critical yet because the golf courses are operating normally”. If it’s truly critical, you stop golf course operations until the reservoir has been replenished.
It is indeed a business sector, and if the choice is between golf courses and data centers, they can choose to keep the golf courses and allow the data centers to be built elsewhere. I think it would be a bad choice, but it is indeed their choice.
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Robert Davies, a physics professor at Utah State University, believes the giant computer center will create a massive heat island capable of devastating the area’s ecology. He estimated the finished project would cover about as many square miles as Washington, D.C., making it the largest data center on the planet, and that it could produce enough heat to spike nighttime temperatures by as much as 28 degrees Fahrenheit [emphasis added] in the high desert valley where it will be located. “What I’ve found is, it’s so much worse than I even thought it would be,” Davies said.
He said the additional thermal load in the valley will be the “equivalent of about 23 atom bombs’ worth of energy dumped into this local environment every single day” and that trapped heat could devastate the local ecology. “What happens if you deposit that much energy continuously into a topography like this? Right at the north end of the Great Salt Lake, a watershed that is in collapse? A high-desert environment? A valley?” All good questions, and the answers are troubling, to say the least.
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That would be your opinion and I would choose golf!
JimA
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