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A comment on Anthropic strikes $3.4B deal to generate gas-fired power for data centres. Parent comment

Re:Anthropic strikes $3.4B deal to generate gas-fired power ... by thenthenthen on Sunday November 08, 2026 @01:02PM (#50415527)
True. But most are in the east? The most expensive land? Near the coast? I have a hard time believing that. I think most are in the west, where energy land water is cheap and the climate cool. I have seen the datacenters in Guizhou with my own eyes and its insane. Now they are expanding to Inner-Mongolia and also in (sub tropical!) Guangdong specifically for AI datacenters.
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Re:Anthropic strikes $3.4B deal to generate gas-fired power ... by yorwba on Monday November 09, 2026 @04:04AM (#50423002)
There are plenty of places in the east where land and water are cheap enough that people use it for rice farming. Meanwhile, basic infrastructure in the west is lacking, including the electrical grid. That's also why energy is cheap there: it's difficult to get it to places where people would be willing to pay more.

Guangdong is on the eastern coast. Inner Mongolia isn't, but the main data center hub of Ulanqab was no doubt chosen for being relatively close to Beijing. Guizhou is the one example that's actually somewhat remote, but it's a small share of the total so far. Farther west, Yunnan, Sichuan, Tibet, Qinghai and Xinjiang don't really feature at all in the datacenter business.

Ultimately, the benefits of proximity seem to be more important.

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