Aluminum has left an indelible mark on the world: more than 3 billion tons of red sludge, a waste product of the refining process, are currently stored in open-air ponds or mounds. But for Sumedh Gostu, co-founder and CEO of Fast Metals, there is a treasure in caustic waste. “It’s a very rich resource,” he
America’s largest power grid has struggled to cope with an onslaught of data centers. Now, after an auction to add more generation capacity failed, grid operator PJM Interconnection has said it will take data centers and other large users offline during power outages. The decision comes as the breakneck pace of data center construction has
For hard-tech startups, manufacturing is an expensive endeavor. Now, Thea Energy has a head start thanks to a grant from the Department of Energy. The fusion energy startup told TechCrunch on Monday that it received a $20 million grant from ARPA-E to help manufacture its modular high-temperature superconducting (HTS) magnets. HTS magnets are expensive but
This week a power line went down outside Washington, DC. Normally, the grid would only need a few seconds to recover from such an event. But this took more than 10 minutes because more than 3 gigawatts of data centers stopped consuming power almost simultaneously. The event caused voltage on PJM’s grid to spike from
Over the past year, Meta has funded the construction of at least a dozen natural gas power plants, including a project that alone will burn enough natural gas to generate as much electricity as the entire state of South Dakota uses. Meta is now no longer part of RE100, a corporate renewable energy initiative, after
OpenAI announced Wednesday that it will spend $750 billion on infrastructure through 2030, about 25% more than it estimated earlier this year, The Wall Street Journal reported. The renewed blitz comes as its Stargate data center project appears to have stalled. The first salvo in OpenAI’s spending spree will be a $20 billion data center
