Technology

For the same reason housing should be a speculative investment, and healthcare services available only to the highest bidder.

In a well regulated way that includes oversight, yes.

To a significant extent, they do, contracting for construction of generation and transmission (very often renewable), at least at the largest scale.

But, it's (mostly) all on the grid.

With demand like that, it's not like there isn't significant negotiation with the local power company, especially because they're frequently built a significant distance from existing large power infrastructure.

Heck, all the big 3 cloud providers signed deals for nuclear generation in the last few months. https://spectrum.ieee.org/nuclear-powered-data-center

Here's just one more article about these sorts of investments: https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/clean-energy/google-has-a-20b-plan-to-build-data-centers-and-clean-power-together

Uber-like surge pricing on electricity

We don't really: that story you heard from a few years ago was the only company that billed like that. The customers made a bet that the pricing averages through the day (lower at night, higher cost during the day) would average out in their favor over fixed-cost billing, and frankly, it did right up until it didn't.

They took a risk and got bit by, frankly, not understanding how the system works and basically ate the spikes.

Everyone else paid $0.09/kwh or so during that whole period, and the electric providers ate the cost because when you're averaging out spikes across millions of kwh, it won't lead to bankruptcy.

What? I've grown up around people in the nuclear industry, and nothing I've ever learned about the function "wastes" water.

Not saying you're wrong. Renewables are absolutely preferable, and Texas is prime real estate to maximize their effectiveness. I'm just hung up on the "waste water building reactors" part.

Guessing it was some sort of research about the building process maybe, that I've just missed?

But what about all that holy black ooze?

"The least corrupt/utility sector" I must be thinking of the wrong Texas, which one are you referring too?

near site solar + 4 hour batteries is quicker to build

But is it quicker at scale? Can solar and battery production keep up with expanding demand? Can it continue to do so over 10+ years? Can it outpace demand and start replacing fossil fuels?

Usually the proper solution is a mix of technologies. It shouldn't be solar vs nuclear vs wind, but a mixture.

Nuclear does a great job at providing a large amount of energy consistently. It's really bad at fluctuations in demand, and it's also really bad at quick rollout. I think it makes a lot of sense to build nuclear in Texas over the long term because it can start filling in demand as efficiency of older panels and batteries drop off, which extends the useful life of those installations and reduces reliance on battery backups.

I also think hydrogen is an interesting option as well, since it's sort of an alternative to batteries, which can be hard to get at scale. Use excess generation for electrolysis and use those for mobile energy use (e.g. trucks, forklifts, etc) or electricity generation. It's also not ideal, but it could make sense as part of a broader grid setup.

Solar is awesome and we need more of it. I just want to encourage consideration of other options so we can attack energy production from multiple angles.