Google will pay people to use less electricity so its data centers can use more

benoau

> adjusting tens of thousands of smart thermostats at once, effectively moving their electricity usage to a time when there is less demand Somewhere amongst this was a great opportunity for reducing consumption of electricity from dirty sources, mass-optimizing millions of thermostats, car and electric bikes/etc charging, refrigerators, computer power settings etc to reduce emissions... but now it sounds like it should be illegal.

Vaushite

(They'll still pay more for electricity, but less than if they hadn't taken the deal) Edit: why is this comment suddenly grounds for an auto shadowban??????

BLKNSLVR

All these decades with little, slow action on climate change, and all it actually took was the seven largest companies in the world wanting more power than is commonly available and, yes, we can find ways of making the average household more efficient right away! It's a sad, but true, indictment about how scaled humanity works.

mikestorrent

I have an EV charger that already pays me an offset, apparently selling the carbon credits I am not using by not driving with gasoline? It doesn't pay a ton, but it's interesting. I have heard of efforts to link thermostats etc. with this virtual power plant idea so that when there is an energy demand one's home appliances stop working so hard and use less energy. This of course could lead to hot/cold houses for people, so there must always be the option to manually override if the discomfort is a problem. So many of these efforts come from e.g. California... other places in the world have wider weather extremes to worry about!

Izikiel43

It would be interesting if google started to offer deals on getting people solar and having an exclusive contract with individuals on the output. Basically, you get solar and battery, and google gets the excess power.

gnabgib

Source article: We are working with Voltus to build a 1-gigawatt virtual power plant (2 points, yesterday) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50198487 Origin 5 months ago Google and Voltus sign agreement for smart energy capacity (3 points) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48371484

johnea

Of course, here in the US, regalation, is not only misspelled, it's also a dirty word. Mostly because it fails to keep all the dirt of industrial processes from landing in everyone's yard 8-/ In China, you know, where their tech is kicking our ass (why else do we need to keep an ever increasing amount of it out of the country completely?), there are new regulations that require data centers to reach total energy self sufficiency, based on sustainable sources: https://enviliance.com/regions/east-asia/cn/report_10060 Here in the US, any legal entity that's not able to spend at least millions in lobbying and other bribery is not a consideration for the government...

10111001

A taste of the abundance of our coming AI utopia: "intelligence" too cheap to meter, but you won't be able to afford much electricity.