Ask HN: Are you paying electricity bills for your service?

[scottcha]

Hi HN, We are an early-stage startup working on OS-level AI energy optimization. Our goal is to revolutionize the way systems manage power consumption at the OS level making AI and compute more energy-efficient and sustainable. Our initial prototype has demonstrated significant saving (20%+) without application/model changes.

We are looking to connect with individuals who have exposure to energy costs, energy purchasing or a strong desire to optimize them at the server and datacenter level. Whether you are working in data centers, telco, AI infra, or any area where energy efficiency is crucial, we would love to discuss potential challenges, solutions, and opportunities in this space. We're eager to learn from your experiences and explore ways we can collaborate to make a meaningful impact. Drop us a note at scottcha@live.com and we'll connect up.

Thanks Scott & Chad

[westurner]

Various solutions for (incentivizing) energy efficiency:

- https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/24h

- "First open-source global energy system model" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39333285

- There aren't intraday electricity prices in most markets in the United States. (You must have intraday electricity prices to be an EU Member State, by comparison.). Wouldn't intraday prices incentivize energy storage solutions and energy efficiency?

- "Ask HN: Does mounting servers parallel with the temperature gradient trap heat?" (2020) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23033210

- "Ask HN: How to reuse waste heat and water from AI datacenters?" (2024) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40820952

- "New HPE fanless cooling achieves a 90% reduction in cooling power consumption" (2024) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42106715

- "Next-generation datacenters consume zero water for cooling" (2024) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42376406

- "Three New Supercomputers Reach Top of Green500 List" (2024) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40473656

/? costed opcodes (smart contracts, eWASM,)

[scottcha → westurner]

Thanks, Yes I'm a long time electricity maps customer. I also agree that the EU markets data transparency is further along in helping incentivize opportunities here.

Also thanks for the other links!

[westurner → scottcha]

It looks like they have data for the United States now.

We have public utilities that must raise bonds to grow to scale with demand, and some competitive electrical energy markets with competitive margin and efficiency incentives in the US.

FWIU, datacenters are unable to sell their waste heat, boiled sterilized steam and water, unused diesel, and potentially excess energy storage.

To sell energy back to the grid to help solve the Duck curve and Alligator curve problems requires a smart grid 2.0 or a green field without much existing infrastructure to cross over or under.

To sell datacenter waste heat through a pipe under the street to the building next door, you must add some heat.

Nonprofit org opportunity: Screenplay wherein {{Superhero}} explains this and other efficiency and sustainability opportunities to the market at large, perhaps with comically excessive product placement for which charity or charities and physics with 3D CG

"Solar thermal trapping at 1,000°C and above" (2024) should be enough added heat to move waste datacenter heat to a compatible adjacent facility.

Sand batteries hold more heat than water, in certain thermal conditions.

Algae farms can eat CO2 and Heat, for example.

Cooling towers waste heat and water as steam.

Nonprofit org opportunity: Directory with for-charity sponsored lists of renewable energy products and services, with regions of operation; though there's a way to list schema:LocalBusiness and their schema:Offer (s) for products and services with rdfs:Class and rdfs:Property for search engines to someday also index

Business opportunity: managed renewable energy service to quote solar/wind/hydro/geo/fauna/insulation site plans [for nonprofit organizations], with support contracts and safety inspection and also crew management

[westurner → scottcha]

The Landauer limit is presumed to be a real limit to electronic computation: changing a 1 to a 0 releases energy that can't be sent out on the negative so it's wasted as thermal energy.

Photonic computing, graphene computing, counterfactual computing, superconductors, and probably edge chiral currents do or will eventually do more computation per unit of energy.

Ops per wHr metrics quantify the difference.