By RICK NEBEL
Los Alamos

This letter is a comment on two of the op-ed pieces that appeared in last week’s Los Alamos Daily Post: Robert Gibson’s article (link) and Paul Gessing’s article (link). Mr. Gibson pointed out that electrification is nothing new. However, the present scale of it is unprecedented. Mr. Gessing pointed this out in his article. He congratulated the governor for getting commitments to bring 3 new AI data centers to New Mexico.

The interesting part is that just 1 of those data centers consumes about 7 GW. I don’t have firm numbers on this, but the present total consumption of electricity in New Mexico is probably less than 3 GW. Just 1 of these 3 new data centers will roughly triple the power consumption in New Mexico. And this is just Round 1. You can rest assured that the aspirations of AI centers are only going to grow. Even if the efficiency of the computer chips dramatically increases, they will simply use more chips.

Although these AI centers will certainly have to build their own electric generating capacity, they will also be buying every spare MW they can find on the grid. This is already happening around the country. Our family farm is located in Clinton, Ill. (population 7,000), which also has a nuclear power plant. This past summer Jeff Bezos purchased 20% of this plant, with a promise to extend the license for another 20 years. While this is great news for the town of Clinton, what about the 200,000 people who are presently using this power? You can rest assured that their electricity bills are going to increase.

So what does that mean for us in Los Alamos? I think we need to start generating our own power here in the county. If we contract for power from the outside, eventually the costs are going to go up because the AI demand will outbid us for power. In particular, if we contract for power on an Indian reservation they can pull the plug on us at any time and sell it to someone else. We learned from the Buffalo Thunder debacle (when they didn’t pay their creditors and the creditors tried to foreclose on them) that contracts with an Indian reservation are not enforceable.

The easiest way for Los Alamos to generate power is with solar PV and battery storage. However, this may not be the only option. I talked to Philo Shelton (DPU manager) last week and asked if there were any legal restrictions that would prohibit our public utility from selling power on the grid. He didn’t think so, but that will have to be determined by attorneys. If we could generate power in the 100 MW + range, that would open a lot of possibilities. Nuclear is one of them, but that might require a lot of water that we don’t have. Gas is also a possibility. Gas turbines run on a Brayton cycle and don’t require a lot of water, but they do produce greenhouse gases. That’s out of line with the “green new deal”. 

Another possibility that Philo mentioned is geothermal power since we are sitting on the edge of a caldera. There were geothermal test holes drilled on the Valles Caldera (probably in the 1970s) but they were judged not to be commercially viable. My understanding is that the hot dry rock project on Fenton Hill also wasn’t terribly successful. However, that was before the days of fracking and horizontal drilling. This might be a really good solution, if it doesn’t consume too much water. 

If we don’t do something, I think we can expect our electricity bills to eventually go up significantly. It is apparent to me that in the future the people who are generating electricity are going to do a whole lot better than those who are consuming it. I would like to know what everybody else thinks.