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this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2026
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askchapo
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But it's the same type of engineering expertise, of which we have a shortage. For example, Amazon said they're going to build a 7.5GW gas power plant for their data center cluster. The largest gas power plant in the world is 8.5GW and it took 40 years to build. It sort of doesn't matter if Amazon's plant is going to be grid-attached or not, it's going to be a massive engineer effort.
Easier to engineer for one customer than 20,000, maybe.
Yes, the grid itself is infrastructure that is failing regardless of the state of power plants, and going behind the meter eliminates that one complexity. But that's not as much a rarified engineering problem as it is a straight up under-developed infrastructure problem.
There's still a 3+ year waiting list for gas turbines. There's still a massive shortage of engineers that can build a power plant. The power plants are still incredibly difficult. And a.i. workloads are so volatile that it requires entirely new solutions to power management.