korrents

What Casey Handmer thinks about data centers

@casey-handmer · 76 positions · 2 changes of mind

Physicist, formerly at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and founder of Terraform Industries, which is building plant to make synthetic natural gas from sunlight and air. Writes about energy, space and manufacturing at caseyhandmer.wordpress.com.

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7 dated positions, 2025 to 2026, in their own words. Our reading of what Casey Handmer has said — not written or endorsed by them.

  1. Our readingData centres in orbit will be a better business than Starlink, because an inference token is worth far more per byte than a video packet.

    Their wordsThe economics of orbital “datacenters” or essentially glorified Starlink satellites with a bunch of GPUs attached are likely to be even better than Starlink.

    ↗Space AI: I guess we’re doing Moon factories nowcaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 2nd of 3 in this piece

    semiconductors

    Interesting
  2. 2 months earlier

  3. Our readingData centres will end up net suppliers of power to their communities, because a solar plant big enough to keep the machines running spills most of what it makes.

    Their wordsOn the flip side, these captive solar power plants will be curtailing approximately 75% of their generated power and will be able to provide net power on all but a few days per year.

    ↗Energy Predictions 2025caseyhandmer.wordpress.com 2nd of 6 in this piece

    solar

    Interesting
  4. 4 months earlier

  5. Our readingNatural gas can power the first gigawatt of data centres a year but not the fiftieth, because every input behind it runs into a supply limit.

    Their wordsWe're not going to run out of natural gas at 1 gawatt per year indefinitely. Okay, what if we're doing 5 gawatts per year? What if we're doing 50 gawatts per year? What if we're doing 100 gawatt per year? Like, you can you can just break the situation.

    ↗China is killing the US on energy. Does that mean they’ll win AGI? — Casey Handmeryoutube.com 7th of 24 in this recording

    Interesting

  7. Our readingLarge captive loads like data centres will go back to building their own power plants, the way aluminium smelters once did.

    Their wordsyou're going to have to build your own power plant for them, which is how it used to work. Like if you if you had an aluminum plant back in the day, you would be building your own power plant for it as well.

    ↗China is killing the US on energy. Does that mean they’ll win AGI? — Casey Handmeryoutube.com 8th of 24 in this recording

    Interesting

  9. Our readingWithin a few years, the majority of newly broken-ground data centres will be mostly solar-powered.

    Their wordsSo I think within a few years we'll probably see that like the majority of new DCs that are going in will be mostly solar

    ↗China is killing the US on energy. Does that mean they’ll win AGI? — Casey Handmeryoutube.com 12th of 24 in this recording

    solar

    Interesting

  11. Our readingAn off-grid data centre needs nothing connecting it to the world but an optical fibre — no transmission line, no interconnection, no grid at all.

    Their wordsBut then all you need to connect that to the outside world is like an optical fiber, right? An optical fiber cable which you can string up on poles, you can run underground, you could even use microwave links if you really wanted to.

    ↗China is killing the US on energy. Does that mean they’ll win AGI? — Casey Handmeryoutube.com 13th of 24 in this recording

    Interesting

  13. Our readingA solar-powered data centre can cut its power draw a great deal while giving up very little compute, which is how it survives a run of bad weather.

    Their wordsactually it turns out that you can significantly decrease power consumption with a very small reduction in overall compute. So if you if you've got like three really bad days in a row or something, you can actually just like you can dial back your power usage quite a lot without compromising your inference or or um or training.

    ↗China is killing the US on energy. Does that mean they’ll win AGI? — Casey Handmeryoutube.com 14th of 24 in this recording

    solar

    Interesting