Repurposed aviation engines power AI data centers, bridging energy gaps and enabling rapid AI infrastructure growth with efficient, low-emission solutions.

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[–] 11 points 10 months ago (5 children)

Isn’t the rotation of the turbine in a jet engine designed with the idea of pushing massive amounts of air and not necessarily the efficiency of the turbine rotation to produce electricity? Like it feels it’s not that efficient and they’re just reaching for anything they can use to generate power.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (4 children)

    Nah, just take the turbofan off and replace it with a generator.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago (3 children)

    Yes, that’s the how. But I was talking about efficiency. Would that engine be just as efficient as another motor connected to a generator to produce electricity? My hypothesis was: no it’s not, which is why I was saying they’re just reaching for anything to provide power at this rate.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    I worked at a turbine manufacturer. The parts are similar but a grounded turbine is not much different in shape to one on a plane. Everything around it is different. Plane turbines sacrifice environmental protection over efficiency... They are more fuel efficient than power plant turbines. But they are more polluting since there's no way to capture and treat the exhaust.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    Thank you. That’s more of the differentiation I was curious about. I know fundamentally a turbine is a turbine but I figured there was some degree of customization and trade offs between the two.

    And the more polluting is gonna be a fun one especially with how bad the issue of generators at the Grok DC in Tennessee is.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago

    The other differences are mostly in materials used. You want to use light weight materials for aircraft engines. Often they require more maintenance because it may be hardened aluminum like 7075 which is great for strength and light weight, but may eventually fail from vibration fatigue where fractures propagate as more back and forth bending cycles happen.

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  • [–] 5 points 10 months ago (3 children)
  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    These are gas turbines, so they typically run kerosene of some description, leaded fuel is actually bad news as far as maintenance goes.

    Leaded fuel is for piston engines.

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  • [–] [S] 25 points 10 months ago (3 children)

    That's right: the slop revolution is powered by A-1 jet fuel. What a glorious way to waste dwindling fossil energy resources...

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  • [–] 21 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    They’re converted to use gas. They take the place of regular industrial gas turbines because they’re more compact and lighter, and can be used later for backup energy after the centres are connected to the grid. So as much as I dislike AI and its relentless impact on power and the environment, misinformation on what fuel these engines are running on isn’t helpful. Also, all the info is available in the article you posted OP.

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  • [–] 6 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    Using turbines is like the fking most common way to generate electricity ever, damn this people, they are as dumb as the chatbox they're creating.

    Like what, they will build a combined cycle power plant? one of the most common ever? and a administrator or whoever writes this bullshit, saw a power plant for the first time in their lives, and saw a turbine and went "Oh lOOOOOKKKKKKKKKk IS a turbine, like on planes that go whoosh wooosh trough the sky".

    edt: i read it and is just using turbines made for aviation, for energy instead, still quite dumb, but not as much.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    Using turbines is like the fking most common way to generate electricity ever,

    Except for solar, it's the only way.

    And I swear solar is just photons spinning some tiny turbine and pushing electrons around. I know that's wrong, but I'm believing it anyway.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

    For a while, some solar power systems did just boil water and spin a turbine as well, by having mirrors that lasered a tower of molten salt. It's only really recently that photovoltaics have become cheap enough to replace them.

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  • 16 comments in c/technology@lemmy.world view that post
    [–] [S] 44 points 1 year ago

    Spectrum makes this seems a very positive way of "bringing power gaps", but the social consequences of living nearby multiple engines running 24/7 are terrible. This video describes a "town that elon musk is poisoning "

    https://youtu.be/3VJT2JeDCyw

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  • [–] 42 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    No, we cannot have silent, emissions and maintenance free solar panels on rooftops. We need to run jet engines inside data centers instead.
    Yes, this makes so much sense.

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  • [–] 22 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I'm sure they'll put them outside where the residents of local towns will be subjected to their cacophony

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    They will call that "progress", and probably "clean energy", that's going to be good for aaalllll citizens of that town.

    That's why the citizens will have to pay extra taxes to finance the new "town infrastructure".

    Now bring the data center money.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    Some of the biggest data centers are pushing 100 megawatts. When I worked on the solar farms out west, an entire industrial site would be around 200-400 megawatts.

    For context, those sites would be powering entire towns. The Blythe mesa solar project is over 2,000 acres of solar panels. It's bigger than the town. Quite a bit of Las Vegas is ran on solar.

    It's not quite as simple as just sticking panels on the roof of the data center. It also needs to be reliable enough to store the energy so it's available at night when the sun is down. This is still one of solar's biggest hurdles.

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  • [–] 18 points 1 year ago*

    There just aren’t enough gas turbines to go around and the problem is probably going to get worse

    So the market doesn't provide enough energy, energy generators and the actual tooling (GPUs) to satisfy demands of one.single.industry.

    Take from that what you want.

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  • [–] 14 points 1 year ago

    Connection to grid is heavily regulated, can take ten years or more and faces heavy opposition, nobody wants this

    Want data center rn

    Install natural gas jet engine turbines

    Profit

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago

    What are chances they fly away and leave us alone ?

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Remind me why this would be better than a diesel generator.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago

    Lower emissions, and natural gas is cheaper than diesel. Also, the lead time is much shorter, as there aren't many manufacturers of large diesel generators that could keep up with AI datacentre demand, whereas there are lots of airliner turbofans being retired that could be refurbished to become these generators.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    As much as I hate calling LLMs “AI” and the recent surge in its use and production, why hasn’t any of these brilliant machines told their owners about nuclear power? We figured out how to rub spicy rocks together and generate power without the need to light anything on fire a long time ago.

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