Re:I'm Not Convinced the AI Bubble Exists
by sarchertech on Monday November 09, 2026 @10:12AM
(#50426746)
> That’s a lot, but hypothetically if electricity prices double, it’s more likely to lead to angry residential consumers than a doubling of inference token prices.
But that’s a feedback loop that could lead to more supply being built. Or it could lead to regulations that put enormous surcharges on data center power consumers, which effectively shield consumers directly from the lack of supply.
Re:I'm Not Convinced the AI Bubble Exists
by keleus on Monday November 09, 2026 @12:27PM
(#50428627)
Biomass powerplants use waste material as fuelnot fresh trees. They use waste wood like sawdust, scrap pieces. The most common fuel type is trash. They are used to recycle not to burn fresh resources.
Re:I'm Not Convinced the AI Bubble Exists
by sarchertech on Monday November 09, 2026 @09:36PM
(#50435405)
That’s partially true, for some plants but not for this one.
This would be the largest biomass plant in the US. 5x larger than the next largest plant.
A 500MW plant would require almost 50x the amount of available waste material from logging and sawmill operations in the entire state of TN (where the plant is being built).
The developer of the project said that the plant was designed to create demand for low grade pine timber following pulp mill closures in the area and that the plant will burn between 350-500 truckloads of logs per day.
But as a fraction of inference revenue, there is good reason to estimate that the direct electricity costs are perhaps 1-5% of inference revenue.
That’s a lot, but hypothetically if electricity prices double, it’s more likely to lead to angry residential consumers than a doubling of inference token prices.
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, November 2026: https://eta-publications.lbl.gov/sites/default/files/2026-11...
There are substantial economies of scale on both power generation (grid-scale) and inference power consumption (batching and utilization).