989 WORD caller topics: Data Centers; Gas vs Solar ; Data Center Jobs

What this episode covers

00:00 I let's go to read in pickings and talk to him about data centers what's going on read hey well just wanted to say that you know saying that a data center is going to make their own power sounds good but what are they going to use we're not going to be letting them use coal it's going to be years before they use nuclear no one wants them to use hydro so it's going to be gas well guess what that's going to do to your gas bill that's going make your natural gas go way up because there's only 00:29 much capacity that we have right now unless we expand that and I don't know how much we can do on that. Well, that's the thing. I hope that they're going to be the one task with doing that instead of the rate payers. Yeah. And then the other thing was solar, know, and all these solar and uh wind take up lots of acres and you got to store the stuff overnight. 00:59 because you don't get, well, wind, we don't have good wind in South Carolina for wind power. If you look at a wind map, we don't have enough. you're right about that. you gotta store it and you gotta have massive battery banks for that, and nobody really does that. Yeah, you're right. It's gonna be a difficult thing to do. I appreciate it, Reed. You know what we really need here in South Carolina? Rain! 01:23 We need some rain y'all. Y'all need to be praying for the rain. Let's go to John and Marietta. John, welcome. 01:31 Hey, bud. How you doing? I'm doing good, man. What's up? Hey, with regard to the data centers, I sell the equipment that cools the data centers. Right. And with regard to the source of electricity, you're are you sitting down? Yeah. Oh, shock me here. 01:56 They're using diesel powered generators. Really? Wait a minute. could have swore that Democrats would have screamed about that. 02:09 They have diesel powered generators because the infrastructure, the grid will not support the power requirements for the cooling load. And we run our chillers off of diesel powered generators. Wow. And those generators are made right there in Spartanburg, South Carolina. And the chillers are made right here in Charlotte, North Carolina. Yeah. And, uh yep, it's run off of diesel. That's that is fascinating. John, I appreciate it. You see, 02:39 That's why Bill Gates, Mr. The World, Global Warming is an existential threat to the planet. As all of a sudden he came out and he said, well, know, it's not really an existential threat. It's not really that big of a deal. Why? Because he's heavily invested in data centers. Because that's the wave of the future. Let's go to Darren in Spartanburg. Darren, welcome. What's on your mind? Well, Charlie, 03:09 First of all, I'm a truck driver, I feel the fuel cost problem pretty hard. I know. Gaffney, South Carolina, Cherokee County, however you want to call it though, was actually slated for a nuclear power station. It was going to be right off the Broad River. Yeah. Uh, years ago, they had it slated, it got canceled and they wound up filming the movie, The Abyss and the reactor pits had been dug. Uh, the last attempt... 03:37 They canceled in 2017 when Westinghouse went bankrupt. Yeah. So because of the VC summer deal. There's a viable nuclear site right there in Gaffney that's already had all these different, you know, things done to it and checked and all the safety stuff. It's just a matter of them putting their money where their mouth is and building it. Yeah, you're right about that. I wouldn't mind seeing more nuclear stations around. appreciate it. Darren, Lynn is in Cleveland County. Lynn, welcome. 04:06 Hey man, how you doing? I'm great. What's up? The previous caller is right. Earl Owensby ended up with that place in Gaffney or Blacksburg, wherever it is. And that's where the movie got filmed. He's right. The other thing I just want to say is we got sold that sack of goods from my government up here. Okay. Yeah. We ended up with one of those data centers. There's about three cars in the par ...

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