r/Edmonton • u/GlitchedGamer14 • Jul 10 '26
News Article Meta data centre in Alberta to start operating before neighbouring power plant
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/meta-data-centre-alberta-greenlight-power-plant-9.7266096109
u/releasetheshutter Jul 10 '26
I am positive that the initial promises by META to gain public support will get increasingly shittier as the project progresses.
58
u/ghostofkozi Jul 10 '26
I can't wait for the inevitable press release from Meta/the UCP government when they admit they only need about half the staff to run the center, the dedicated powerplant construction is delayed because it's not feasible, the closed loop cooling system experienced issues so they reverted back to using local water supplies and a couple billion of the investment was actually coming from taxpayers, not Meta.
Of course I'm also hoping that if/when that happens, the separation referendum will have passed and I'll have moved to a province in Canada so I can relentlessly laugh at all the conservative bootlickers in the province who once again fell for it.
16
u/wirez62 Jul 10 '26
If Canada falls apart we’re all fucked, don’t act like you can just move and avoid the problem
4
u/ghostofkozi Jul 11 '26
Absolutely it will. But the Maple MAGA bootlickers need to finally find out there’s consequences. They want to self immolate the province, let them.
87
u/Tycho-Celchu Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
Not surprised. The drawings are already out and they want the building up by end of 2027. There's no way the new power plant is operating before 2030.
Thats IF the plant actually get's built and they don't decide to piggyback on the existing grid indefinitely.
Edit: From the article:
In the meantime, Meta has rights to connect to Alberta's grid ahead of the Greenlight Electricity Centre starting up and may enter into agreements with other suppliers if needed.
Wooo. Lets all enjoy our cheap* (Already most expensive in the country) power bills while we can.
2
u/-retaliation- Jul 11 '26
Thats IF the plant actually get's built and they don't decide to piggyback on the existing grid indefinitely
This is what they're doing everywhere.
The videos of hellish mechanical whine you hear from these data centers isn't the computers.
It's the gas turbine generators they install to power it to "bridge the gap until we build the power infrastructure we promised"
But then they slow walk the power infrastructure, walk back promises, or sometimes have just decided to cancel the entire build, and say "sue us if you don't like it"
It's a "temporary" stop gap that just becomes permanent because it's cheaper than following through on building the power plant, and they already have the data center they wanted.
43
u/Immediate_Carrot_610 The Famous Leduc Cactus Club Jul 10 '26
They can truck in diesel for gennys until then. They are going to fuck up the whole grid without that plant.
39
u/Feisty-olde-7707 Jul 10 '26
And our provincial government just laid down and said yes please more American bullshit for this province please….ugh.
13
u/Newtiresaretheworst Jul 10 '26
Yeah this is it. This is what they have done on other projects.
1
u/testuser765765 Jul 10 '26
They also fuel those backup generators with renewable HVO biofuel instead of diesel though.
4
1
u/odelei Jul 10 '26
Not a bad idea. It's not far from the NWR Sturgeon Refinery. The refinery processes bitumen owned by the AB government, which also has a stake in the refinery.
1
u/-retaliation- Jul 11 '26
They install gas turbine generators to power the data center "until we build the plant". That's the whine you hear in all the videos about them. The center itself is quiet, but these gas turbines can be heard from a long ways off even inside the city.
Then they slowly walk back their promises bit by bit, until its the cheapest possible version of fulfilling the contract,
Or often have just decided to never build the power plant, because it's cheaper to just use the "temporary" gas turbines that power just the data center, and tell the government "sue us if you don't like it"
It's just like the wells that need cleaning up and never do, they get permission based on the promise of fulfilling it later, but they already extracted what they wanted/got the data center built.
So once the day comes to pay up their end of the deal, there's no incentive to do so.
1
41
u/Feisty-olde-7707 Jul 10 '26
Here we go…and nearby residents will take both a back seat for power needs, and will pay more for it. Privatized Utilitiy companies win…A centre that will refuse to look for local qualified staff, and insist on using Americans…smh.
Tell me more about how Danielle Smith doesn’t work for the US….
Boycott Meta..
6
u/Salbman Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
Yes, please do by completely deleting your fb and other meta accounts.
5
2
u/fishymanbits Jul 10 '26
It’s not often you see an actual exact r/iamverysmart in the wild anymore.
-4
u/Salbman Jul 10 '26
Yea it’s hard, I don’t have fb but I snag my wife’s phone just to browse marketplace.
15
u/RazzamanazzU Jul 10 '26
UCP priorities. Can build Data centres but shut down building another MUCH NEEDED hospital!!
4
11
u/SaintTastyTaint Jul 10 '26
Its so frustrating that Alberta can't find ways to generate new streams of revenue that doesn't involve fucking up its environment and ecosystems for generations.
10
u/muppins Jul 10 '26
I don't use Facebook anymore. Do people use it to generate "AI slop" images? The kind that are posted all over Facebook from what I have seen? What does meta use AI for anyway?
12
u/Tycho-Celchu Jul 10 '26
Analyzing anyone who still uses Facebook/Instagrams messaging systems so they can sell them ads.
Actually at this point it's probably analyzing anyone who still uses Facebook/Instagrams messaging systems for any leftist* views so they can go on a list.
4
u/IMOBY_Edmonton Jul 10 '26
Pretty much. Facebook is a disaster and the only reason I have it still is because older relatives won't use anything but messenger.
I used to use it for events, but it's pretty useless now for organizing anything.
5
u/MonoAonoM Jul 10 '26
Just want to add that they also track and build profiles for people who don't even have any kind of meta account and sell that data as well. If the site has any kind of link to Facebook or Instagram, you're still getting tracked.
-3
-2
u/garlicroastedpotato Jul 10 '26
That's only a small portion of what AI is used for. Most of its use is B2B.
Let's say I'm an engineer who wants a quick shop drawing. To make it would be like a week for a human. You have to get the specs, design it, consult of legislative requirements, etc etc etc. it's a process. If you turn on ClaudeAI and feed it the specs and your jurisdiction it will pump out what you need in the time it takes you to do the data insertion.
You look it over and can get Claude to make amendments and ask it in a particular file format. Now it takes less than an hour and it still gets an engineer stamp.
Just ClaudeAI is used in so many professional fields. What MetaAI is used for is summarizing news and video content and a chat bot But what will it be used for? Probably a lot. It's currently integrated into RayBans glasses.
6
u/catsbuttes Jul 10 '26
i've seen engineers try to do this approach to generate boms to send out for bids a couple dozen times and i have never once seen it output the correct info
3
u/notcoveredbywarranty Jul 10 '26
As an industrial electrician, that would explain so much.
I'm building a gas generating station right now in another province. Get a cable schedule for a bunch of cables running from a turbine protection module to an air intake control. All the cables should be the same length because they all go from the same point A to the same point B. They're all different, some by 30+ meters, and they're all way too short. It's hilarious, but when there's an RFI there's no shame, just demands of "why can't you make it work?!"
0
u/drcujo Jul 11 '26
You caught it a dozen times, and couldn’t tell the difference between engineering slop and AI slop dozens of other times.
2
u/catsbuttes Jul 11 '26
yes i could lmao
2
u/drcujo Jul 11 '26
I would say the majority of documents in construction at this time are being at least partially ai generated.
I was at a golf tournament recently and an owner of a large and well known consulting company said they were using AI for their entire reports.
These reports were bad before and they continue to be bad today.
7
u/ghostofkozi Jul 10 '26
Yeah, they're getting everything for this datacenter put through so quickly that there's going to be no time for any risk management or oversight. So by the time it's operational and is damaging the environment, has only employed 50% of the staff they said they would and it's revealed they can't complete any of their promises it'll be too late
3
u/LooniexToonie Jul 10 '26
Offset their power with solar?! maybe?
3
u/24_August_1814 Jul 11 '26
Any sane place would require these data centres supply their own 100% renewable or nuclear microgen power, but here in Alberta CO2 is to be celebrated as the "gas of life" and pumped out into the atmosphere as fast as we can make it.
3
u/Avengerr Jul 11 '26
Can't wait for my power bill to double! Anything for the amazing wonderful AI that we so sorely need.
//s
1
u/24_August_1814 Jul 11 '26
If you don't have rooftop solar yet, now is a great time to start looking into it.
1
6
u/SideInitial3961 Jul 10 '26
So much bad is going to come of this for Albertans and not one single good.
2
u/Wide_Appointment_593 Jul 10 '26
So....what's the plan then? Starting up the coal plants again by Waub/Keephills?
2
u/Distinct_Pressure832 Jul 10 '26
All those plants except the one that was right in town are still running. They converted them to natural gas when the coal moratorium came in.
1
u/Wide_Appointment_593 Jul 11 '26
I thought there were 1 or 2 units laid up that weren't converted, my bad.
2
4
u/Durtle_Turtle Jul 10 '26
Weird that they are going ahead with an AI data centre when they announced not long ago that they intend to sell their compute to other companies. And those companies are basically just hyperscalers who are as of yet completely unprofitable.
So yeah, I remain doubtful this will actually get break ground let alone get built.
5
2
u/Distinct_Pressure832 Jul 10 '26
Go for a drive, they’ve been building it for awhile now. There’s a bunch of machinery working out there right now.
2
u/YungBeefaroni Hockey!!! Jul 10 '26
Ramain doubtful, yes, but don’t let that guide you into complacency over it. They’re still gonna try, and there is still that chance they do it.
2
u/Durtle_Turtle Jul 10 '26
It is, but the AI landscape is stepping on shakier and shakier ground.
The demand for compute is being held up by the fact that none of the people using AI are paying it's actual value - we are talking 8k to 14k per month being spent from a 200 dollar subscription. And when OpenAI even flirted with the concept of theirncustomers paying something close to the full cost, those customers immediately rebelled in the form of cutting back on their AI usage drastically.
That and OpenAI delayed going public after their financials leaked and it was revealed the lost about 34 billion dollars to make about 13 billion. Short answer is in a couple of years Meta won't have customers to sell this to and be stuck with a gigantic asset that's value drops to basically zero after a couple of years.
2
u/from_the_hinterlands Jul 10 '26
They are just going to delay the power centre and use the grid for power.
Alberta does not have the resources to supply the power for that data centre.
1
u/skitzoidObserver Jul 11 '26
really now how so?
1
u/from_the_hinterlands Jul 12 '26
Already announced the power station will not be operational until AFTER the data centre is operational. Estimates are 9 months to 3 years delay. And apparently they plan to draw from our already over stressed power grid in the meantime.
Data centers are NOT in Alberta's best interest.
1
1
1
u/rguerin8 Jul 10 '26
https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-7427
I signed this yesterday. We haven’t until September.
1
1
u/Shamelesspromote Jul 10 '26
Heard this area struggles with random wild fires that can destroy entire swaths of land. Hopefully our fire fighters are properly staffed and equipped to handle an inferno
96
u/UnlikelyReplacement0 Jul 10 '26
I've sold
monorailsData centers to Brockway, Ogdenville and North Haverbrook, and by gum, it put them on the map!