.jpg)
THE FRONTIER LINE
Hosts Wayne Aston and David Murray explore the critical global pillars of infrastructure development and energy production, from traditional methods to future-forward advancements. The Frontier Line covers the latest industry news, energy innovations, and sustainability trends that are shaping the future. Through expert interviews with industry leaders in renewable energy, utility-scale battery storage, and waste-to-energy technologies, the podcast provides insights into the evolving landscape of energy efficiency and sustainable infrastructure. By focusing on the intersection of innovation and the politics of energy, The Frontier Line highlights transformative ideas and technologies poised to deliver cost-efficient, resilient, and sustainable solutions for global industries.
THE FRONTIER LINE
Tier 5 Data Centers, The Next Frontier
Ever wondered how data centers keep your digital world spinning even during a power outage? Join us as we recount a personal saga of a blackout that led to a deep dive into the world of data centers and their ever-evolving infrastructure. Discover the intricacies of the four official tiers, each with its unique features, and ponder the potential emergence of a fifth tier to meet the demands of our tech-driven future. We'll explore the pressing need for reliable power infrastructure, especially with the rise of AI, and discuss innovative solutions that could redefine our approach to energy resources.
As data centers become the backbone of our digital existence, their classification becomes crucial. We take you through the subtle differences between each tier, from basic tier one facilities to the fault-tolerant, highly secure tier four centers. Imagine a future where tier five data centers promise 100% uptime and incorporate cutting-edge security enhancements like Faraday cages and AI-driven systems. Together, we examine the historical evolution of these tiers and speculate on how rapidly advancing technology might shape the next generation of data centers.
Sustainability is not just a buzzword; it's a necessity. Delve into the future-focused strategies being piloted at Valley Forge Impact Park, where renewable energy solutions and sustainable development are leading the way. We'll share insights into innovative water reclamation techniques and the push towards achieving 100% renewable energy usage. Learn how green building certifications and a robust infrastructure can offer a competitive edge, and why increasing public awareness is key to maintaining leadership in AI and sustainable development. Join us as we advocate for efficiency and forward-thinking design to meet the demands of tomorrow.
Hello, good morning. Welcome to our next episode.
Speaker 2:Good morning, dave, good to see you again Happy to be here.
Speaker 1:So I think today we're going to talk about the tiers in data centers. There are four official tiers. Right now there's talk of what a fifth tier could be. We're obviously very interested in it and so we want to kind of break down for everybody. You know, when we talk about, you know, you hear a tier four, data center. It's kind of important in this space that we, you know, we go over some of the details because it's really relevant to what, what it means, and especially with what we're doing and where we're going. And also, in a funny way, to say, you know, we're, we're starting you don't know this, but we're starting a little bit late getting going today because my power was out. So you know, you know, funny, funny, well, ha ha, universe, it's really funny.
Speaker 1:We're gonna talk about power and you know, and I was thinking about it as it was driving down the debt, driving down here to do this, you know, I don't particularly it doesn't bother me that the power goes out. In fact, actually I'm one of those people because I think we're of an age where, like, yeah, it's kind of nice, it's quiet, it's. You know, I remember these days and I enjoy that peace and quiet. It's probably why I enjoy being in the mountains, because it's just quiet, it's outside of technology, and I feel like we need that. But it also is a reminder, a very stark reminder, of how delicate things are and, being a power, it happens. Power goes out. It might be out for an hour, two, three, four, it might be longer, depending upon what happens. It could be a storm. It takes it out for a while, but we, I think, are starting to see more and more and more of these significant outages, and it's a reminder of how disruptive it is. And some out there will say well, you know, we need to stop relying on technology so much. I'm like, well, yeah, yeah, but that's our entire life, whether we like it or not.
Speaker 1:Energy, however that has been derived, is driving, has driven society, driven it forward from way back when it's. How do we harness energy, how do we create efficiencies? And so, for example, I want to charge my phone, because my phone's going to allow me to maybe act, so I can sit there and I can go through email, whatever it might be, I've introduced all these little micro-efficiencies into my life and if they're not there, it's disruptive as we build out this infrastructure in America and in the world. If the infrastructure's not there, it's going to be incredibly disruptive to our lives, to business, to the way we function, and it will become increasingly difficult to do things if we can't rely consistently on power. And we know, having looked at some of the forecasts, it's a challenge.
Speaker 1:It's going to be a challenge to not have, during high power usage periods, peak periods, brownouts and just out and out outages, and that's not something we're necessarily used to here in America but we're seeing, unfortunately, more and more often. We definitely see it when we have storms and they know this because above ground power lines it takes it out. Texas, florida, louisiana and the Carolinas consistently see these things. They're probably more used to it, but we're seeing more and more and more of this as things change, as the demand on the grid becomes greater and greater. So, anyway, it just got me thinking about all of that and kind of where we are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Well, it's fun to think about that and also acknowledge that what you're describing and having these brownouts and these outages and these grid issues or service issues that's happening in today's environment, in today's landscape. Forget about 10 years from now, when AI is actually the new infrastructure, that we talked about the tiers of infrastructure early on in the show and we classified AI as part of that tier four infrastructure, kind of the late onset infrastructure. But I do believe that as rapidly as it's advancing, it's going to become, it's going to supersede all of the things. It's going to be like the thing that touches everything. So what that? What that will do for the demands on the power? We've already identified that that's like a 10x of the power demand or more. And so I also see the advancements of AI coming on so fast that there's just no chance the grid will be upgraded, that there's no chance the traditional means of power production or transmission are going to pace, keep pace with or get ahead of the advancements in AI. That's not going to happen.
Speaker 1:I don't think so. What if? And the only thing I could think of? I've been thinking about this and I have all kinds of opinions about it, but the only way I see circumventing this in a weird sort of way not only way, I see, but from a top-down solution would be like nationalizing, like making it a wartime, not as wartime, but that kind of a. We're going to put these industries industries to work, to start creating transformers and this and that and the other and build out the symptoms. The only you know, that top-down solution which, again, I have issues with. But I mean, am I wrong there? Am I that? What do you think about that? Well, where you could? We're like to, actually, but that's how big the problem is that's how big the prop.
Speaker 2:Yeah, from a scale perspective, that that could be. That could be a solution that could start to pace with um. I don't think, I still don't know if it could pace with. I still feel like it's an and-and proposition. It's decentralization, heavy focus on decentralization and potentially nationalization of many of those sectors, and advanced renewable, like advancing the whole renewable front. I mean it's probably all the things combined thrown at this problem and maybe we stay ahead of it or maybe we pace with it. Right, but it doesn't outstrip us in four years.
Speaker 1:That's fair. Well, I couldn't help but think this morning I'm like huh, I wonder what broke. And then, knowing now what I know now versus what maybe I knew a year ago, I'd be like huh. I wonder if they have that part. Yeah, yeah, Right.
Speaker 1:You know, and I know that you have backup parts and stuff. But you, you just understanding the, the, the supply chain, and on this side of the equation it's it can be challenging. I mean, and granted, you know you're talking about big power companies and they have that, but nonetheless it's's you start thinking about those things, about the availability. It's not like you could just run down to the uh, you know the, the home depot, necessarily, I mean, and even on the industrial side, you know, do they have those things available to even fix what's broken or can they reroute or whatever it is they're, they're they're going to do? But it's, I wouldn't have thought about that a year ago, about just the availability of some of these parts and as we found, you know, just to build that infrastructure. This is why it's a multi-year, it's one of the reasons it's a multi-year problem oftentimes is is parts, yeah, is stuff, yeah, so interesting way to kind of get into the day. Yeah, I agree. So well, let's just jump into it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm excited to talk about these data center tiers and I'm going to do something where I'm going to pull this up so I can read details, because each tier of data centers I can't remember all the details explicitly how these tiers are broken down, because it'll start to make sense as to why certain things are being done, why you hear tier four data centers talked about a lot, and why there's a little bit of an underground movement to maybe see a tier five data center category added to this. And I think we're already there in our thinking and kind of the data center and then the entire infrastructure that surrounds that and how. We're already there in our thinking and kind of the, the, the data center, and then the entire infrastructure that surrounds that and how we're going about this. So it's so it's kind of interesting to see kind of where, where this is all leading, where all of the funnel is leading. So awesome, yeah, so I'm going to have to put on my I put on my trusty glasses. That's good, you know, yay, okay, yay, okay.
Speaker 1:So tier one data center, and stop me if we have questions. So basic capacity. So the uptime is 99.671% availability, about 28.8 hours of downtime per year. That's a tier one, so that's not a lot of downtime. Yeah, I mean surprisingly, yet that's the bottom of the list. So redundancy no redundancy in power and cooling. Cooling systems are basic cooling infrastructure with no backup Powers. Single power path no backup power generators or UPS Maintenance must be shut down for scheduled maintenance. Security systems may not include 24-7 surveillance. Cost most economical option for small businesses or non-critical applications. Size typically small, suitable for non-mission critical workloads. Fire protection basic fire protection systems. Recovery time high risk of downtime due to unplanned outages.
Speaker 2:Okay, kind of makes sense, right.
Speaker 1:It's sort of like it's the basic, it's the no frills data center.
Speaker 2:Tier one data center, it'd be interesting to quantify of all of the data centers that exist and there's thousands of data centers globally how many are still tier one? You know, what I imagine. Those are like the first, the original. We'll go to the Oracle and see if we can ask that. Okay, We'll see where you find that Actually that's a good question.
Speaker 1:Well, let's ask that Tier two, so redundant capacity components, so up times 99.741% availability. So that's about 22 hours of downtime per year. On the redundancy side partial redundancy in power and cooling An N plus 1 configuration. The cooling systems redundant, cooling components N plus 1. Single power path with backup generators and UPS Maintenance can perform maintenance with some risk of downtime. Security improved security, but still basic compared to higher tiers. Cost affordable for businesses with moderate availability requirements. Size generally larger than tier one. Supports more critical workloads. Fire protection moderate fire protection systems with redundancy Recovery time. Moderate risk of downtime due to maintenance or unplanned outages.
Speaker 2:Now the interesting thing just in my understanding and I'll make an assumption here we could qualify here if we could fact check it. But when it talks about size and capacity, I imagine we're talking about facilities that are like 30,000 square feet to maybe 100,000 square feet, still in tiers one and two.
Speaker 1:That's right, these are relatively small commercial buildings Right, small commercial buildings Right, small commercial buildings. They might be a building in downtown or that building You're like okay, what is that? Well, you know, that's exactly right, okay, tier three so uptime 99.92%. This is tier three. Tier three, okay what they call it concurrently maintainable Okay, so about 1.6 hours of downtime per year. So big jump between tier two to tier three.
Speaker 1:Redundancy full redundancy in power and cooling systems. The cooling systems are fully redundant Dual power paths with UPS and backup generators. Maintenance can perform maintenance without shutting down the system. Security enhanced security systems, including 24-7 monitoring, multi-factor authentication. Cost higher cost due to robust infrastructure. Size larger data centers supporting mission-critical operations. Obviously, fire protection advanced fire protection systems with full redundancy and recovery time. Minimal risk of downtime due to redundant paths. Tier 3 data centers, probably being the bulk of. I'm going to be curious to run that and see what it is being the bulk of. I would. I'm gonna be curious to run that and see what it is probably the bulk of what's out there running most of the most of the critical, the big stuff right now, probably if um in in conjunction with tier four. Tier four has been coming, you know, they've been obviously tier four centers been, you know it all coming online.
Speaker 2:It would also be interesting to know how long Tier 4 has been a concept, from inception of that concept or that classification. How fast has it advanced to where now we're talking about the new concept, tier 5, the new frontier?
Speaker 1:Tier 5 already. Yeah, let's answer that, let's figure that out, we'll answer it. We don't know the answer, but that's a good question. But you're right, how quickly? Because we're in that where you see talk about tier five, it's not official yet. There's actually an institute that actually sets these tiers and certifies and does that. And again, there's a lot of talk. But to your point, so there's been a talk for what a year, a couple years, about what a tier five might look like. How long does that take? Is it a three, three, four, five year process or is this like everything else, just speeding up quicker? And so from tier one to tier two took this long. Tier two to tier three took shorter, tier three to tier four took short. We should find that out. Yeah, so, okay. So tier four is what they call fault tolerant, fault, tolerant, okay.
Speaker 1:This is where a lot of the conversations are had. This is conversations we've had. This is kind of the gold standard of data centers right now. So up times, 99.995% availability, so that's about 26 minutes of downtime per year. So pretty good. Nothing Almost, but for critical operations. If you are, you know, if you're one of the big hyperscalers and let's say you know, you've got tens of thousands of businesses relying on your servers to be able to run and do that. Being down at all and as we found out, as I found out this morning, you know, on a scale can have a huge effect. A huge effect even if it's for a very short period of time.
Speaker 2:So it's critical that you do this, or if this was a military operation that has a data center that's running nuclear AI controls. For a submarine fleet, for example, 26 minutes of downtime is catastrophic. It's everything, yeah, it's everything.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's everything. That's actually a very good point. Redundancy so redundancy in power and cooling fully fault-tolerant Cooling system, dual cooling systems capable of operating during failures. Power dual power paths with 2N UPS and backup generators. Maintenance Maintenance can be performed without affecting operations. Securities Top tier security with 24-7 surveillance, biometric access control and multi-layer authentication. So we're getting into that's military grade, very hardened infrastructure Cost we know Not inexpensive to do this. Highest cost suitable for businesses with zero tolerance for downtime. Size large-scale facilities, typically enterprise-grade or hyperscale data centers. This is that half-million, 250 to half-million square foot or higher type facility.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I wanted to bring up a an article I read yesterday about a california firm, investment firm that bought like 20 data centers, a portfolio of data centers, and, um, they talked about the power capacity consumption of the data centers. You know it was in the hundreds of megawatts. But what was interesting was to look at, of the 20 they bought you're talking about relatively, I mean small these are, these are like from one megawatt capacity to like 35 megawatt capacity data centers, which is not a lot.
Speaker 1:No, no, in the scope of like what people are talking about now. It was back then.
Speaker 2:Yeah it has been historically so. That's so. That's one of the things I want to really drive home to our audience is that that what has been and what currently is is that's 35 megawatts. 50 megawatts is still considered a significant amount of power, but we're having conversations over here about one facility consuming a gigawatt or two gigawatts. So what's about to happen in this next jump is a massive jump. Yes, as we analyze these, categories.
Speaker 1:Well, and I think we've seen that in all technology, and I think there's a scientific term for it about the doubling of technology. We've seen it in just compute power and storage right I mean it's done this where it's doubling, and again I can't remember which law it is, but we're finally seeing that in this space where it was this, this, this, this, and now it's going to just ramp.
Speaker 1:So going from a one megawatt to a one gigawatt, a thousand times the size, but in a very relatively short period of time, is something. But that's all being contemplated and built and done right now.
Speaker 2:What's interesting? You talk about that as the the, the scaling of the tech. You know the tech. Let's talk about just chips or Ram storage. You know I've built some computers from the ground up. I know, you know, I know all about you know, bill is selecting your motherboard and then selecting all the right chips and making sure it's all compatible. And then I've also witnessed over the last 20 years how much that's evolved and how chips have gotten so much more efficient, so much. But we're talking really about adjustments in the manufacturing and supply chain to accommodate that. We're not talking about global commodities, mining and power production implications. Yet Now we are. When we start talking about megawatts required or gigawatts required, we're talking about things that have much further reaching, deep, deep, global implications that many of the tech advancements, even though they've hockey stick straight up, that we've still been able to manage that for the most part for the amount of power we've traditionally produced. So that's an interesting thing to consider.
Speaker 1:It's a very interesting thing to consider, because you, because I think we're sitting on that precipice looking going Ooh, I will. How do you do this, like, given the current infrastructure? How? How do you cross that? Yeah, how do you have enough power to come online? How do you connect that power? All of those things? I mean it's, it's one thing. I mean it's not just a, you're right, I mean it's, it's not. We're going to design a, not that it that designing a chip is easier, uh, but designing a smaller or quicker chip and you know usually it's you know they're using less material, right, not more material. That really hasn't, isn't really the thing in power, unless we may be talking nuclear, where they do have, you know, they have some of these smaller nuclear, um, uh, I guess, and you know they're calling them, you know, mini nuclear reactors that are far more efficient, that are better, but that's just keeping up with demand. Yeah, as and and they're not coming online fast enough.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for all kinds of reasons and you're still not that even if we had the most advanced nuclear nuclear reactors powered on available today and we had a petawatt of nuclear available, the grid still isn't there. Nope, the grid still is not there. So what are you going to do about that? It's the big, still the big question, guys. That's what we can continue to talk about since we started the show. Yeah, it's transmit, transmitting, delivering that power is a power distribution problem.
Speaker 1:Yeah, unless you're in letting on one shore and going well, it'd be nice to be over on that other shore, yeah, great to get over there. But oh, we should build a bridge. How would I really have a bridge right now? And we don't really have boats. And well, we've got to have boats. I mean, it's really this big challenge, like, how do you build that out? And that's the problem. You can build an amazing city that you'd want to connect to another side, but unless you can connect it, it doesn't do anybody any good. That's right. So I mean, as we've talked about it a few times, it's a little over two petawatts are sitting sitting right now, 90 of it coming from renewable sources that are not that's not connected to the grid. Yeah, so, and that's half of what we, what, what the us uses in a year, and that's sitting out there right now and and obviously needed. But how quickly can you get that online? And meaning online, how can you connect it? And that's where we come back to these. Well, that's a really interesting challenge. There's no easy answer. All right, so I'll go on to Tier 4. Well, we'll start with Tier 4. So cool, I think. Again, 26 minutes of downtime doing cool systems. Maintenance can be performed. You have surveillance at high cost, large scale Fire protection, high level fire suppression systems with no single point of failure. So that's a high standard of building these things. Recovery time, very low risk of downtime, immediate failover in case of fault. So that is the gold standard today.
Speaker 1:So anytime you hear anyone talking about data centers, generally speaking, they're talking about tier four and that's the level of where everybody's going for, and that also is just talking about kind of that rough infrastructure. That is also maybe also not addressing some of the sub infrastructure, like fiber, like the amount of fiber or or the, the, the, you know, the, the communication or the kinds of fiber connecting all of these systems inside of a data center. That's also part of that mix, because you know that technology too is evolving. And so tier four is also looking at you know you're here, you have probably the best and biggest kinds of, if you will, pipes, you know, firewall-wise, both in the building and outside, to make sure that all these computers can communicate and operating at high efficiency and high speed. So that brings us to Tier 5, kind of what's being talked about, the conceptual tier.
Speaker 1:Okay, here we go, Ready, I'm excited. Okay, uptime, 100% theoretical goal with zero downtime. Is anything ever zero or anything ever? Is there anything ever? A hundred percent? That's a high standard, I mean. I mean, and I guess it's a hundred percent until it fails, right, right, I mean, yeah, well, we're down for a minute. It's not 100%, but it's pretty damn close. So redundancy, complete multi-location redundancy with geographically dispersed sites, that's interesting. That lends itself to an interesting know being able to take over for one if one goes down, and that's that's interesting. Yeah, again, all theoretical right now. I'm sure the people that that that you know, they have their idea of maybe what it might look like. We're just talking about possibilities. So, fully redundant across different geographic locations, a redundant power and cooling infrastructure across multiple facilities can perform maintenance without any operational impact globally. Maximum security, including cyber and physical layers, with AI-driven monitoring. That makes sense. That's where this is all going so in maximum security.
Speaker 2:you're talking about Faraday cage technology to protect from electromagnetic attacks, cyber attacks, physical attacks in the building. Yep, all of them. There's a lot to consider on the security side when you have that much data.
Speaker 1:Right, if you're that serious, then here in Utah we have the data center that will not be talked about, the NSA data center down in Utah County. For anybody who's been down and around there, the security is off the charts. You can't. I mean it's a very, very significant you feel it. It's a presence. The way they designed the facility was with that in mind. It's obviously designed right next to a military camp. So I mean there's a lot going on infrastructure-wise because what's in there is probably everything it's probably like and so. But as these independent data centers not necessarily a government facility come online, that's what we're talking about. We're talking about that level of security so that they can be penetrated. Premium pricing, not shocking Distributed data centers. So that's why I've seen distributed. I've seen them also as singular centers, as some of the conversations around protocols on. On that. Fire protection, a geographic redundancy makes local incidents relevant. You're irrelevant, so this would be okay. You have a fire around you. There's enough fire protection that the facility is never going to be touched. Recovery time you know, let's see, let's see recovery time no recovery needed due to full operational redundancy across mobile sites. And there you go. So one of the other parts of this, of this tier five is the sustainability features, and that's where we've been talking a lot about anyway. Um, because that's what everybody sees is like. Okay, it's one thing to have a tier four data center, but we know they're they use massive amounts of power. That's fine. It's kind of where it is. We know they're not always efficient as they can be, um, so how do we solve that issue? And that is also and what we can talk about that.
Speaker 1:I shared an article with you yesterday that caught me by surprise. I think it goes to this point. They talked about how much water it takes to do an email. Yeah, using AI, and they compared four different states I think it was so Washington, texas, arizona and one other, and so Washington State was way up there and I did the math. It's equivalent to, again, if you're here in Utah or in the West and you know, maverick, they're kind of like our kind of regional 7-Eleven, if you will, they have a thing called their XXL drink. It's 44 ounces give or take, so I sent it away and I said so. Basically, one of those cups of water every time you do an email in Washington State.
Speaker 2:Now just to clarify for the listeners what the article is alleging here is that that water, that's water consumption, real water consumption yep, that's a direct correlation to cooling center yes or cooling infrastructure within a data center. Yes, that's, that's hosting whatever or housing whatever in order for you to do that function. That's right. Is that correct?
Speaker 1:that's exactly right that it it takes. There's so much power needed and it and so much cooling needed to do these things and to and to perform these activities. They've broken it down and say, okay, what's, let's get it into something we can understand. I think it was, it was actually a little bit more than. One of those cups was like 40, 49 ounces, I think is 49 somewhere in there. Ounces of water, that's the equivalent, that's how much it's taking.
Speaker 1:Now, texas turns out was far more efficient. They were down like I want to say like a seventh of that of what Washington was, and then all the other states were kind of like stepped down in between. So there's a big chasm between the most efficient centers or a place where maybe has access for water and doesn't really think about, well, how do I be the most right? Whereas Texas has got to be very mindful of water usage. But they're, they're accomplishing the same thing, mm-hmm. So shows it's possible.
Speaker 1:But you start to. You said you know I, that's out with me. I'm like that's a lot of water, yeah, and I know some of it, and this is the tier four, tier five difference. Some of it is recycled, um, and and some of the centers are using, you know, glycol, or using different kinds of systems, but, at the end of the day, these you know these centers still aren't anywhere as efficient as they, and that's why we've been talking about what we've been talking about, which is, well, how do you do these things and make them get them to that carbon neutral point, or that carbon negative or that very green point where they're not wasting anything and they're having very minimal impact on natural resources?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so have you read much on the tier five whisperings of waterless cooling systems? I have, yeah, there's.
Speaker 1:I would. I hope somebody can email us and say, hey, there's any expert out there watching us that wants to talk about that? I'd love to talk about being there with that. You know what that means. I've read a little bit about what I know you have to. I've seen it.
Speaker 2:I wouldn't know enough to be able to talk about it intelligently. You know, yeah, that's gonna be an interesting key point to be focused on as we're designing this tier five. Yes, because that's our. Our mentality around this is okay. We're building these parks, we're developing these parks. We talked about the valley forage impact parks. Right, we're talking about our commitment to develop these data centers on the parks with on-site power production and so, as a developer, developing multiple power systems for unique energy mix and redundancy to service such a data center.
Speaker 2:We're also very focused on water, water reclamation, water efficiency center.
Speaker 2:We're also very focused on water, water reclamation, water efficiency and you know, there's an example of one of the data centers in Utah our engineers were telling us about in our design conversations, where the water reclamation technology was a little too expensive and so they just cut a deal with the city.
Speaker 2:They pump the hot water. The data center pumps the hot water into tanks and then they distribute that for free to water public areas of the city. Okay, that's one unique way to approach that, but it's still water consumption, you're still using massive amounts of water, so it's a highly inefficient way to approach that. But then you're also going to get into the conversation of water efficiency around sprinkling, okay, well, if the data center is not providing it, then they're going to be paying for it anyways, out of irrigation water or whatever. We've already talked about AI-driven sprinkling mechanisms, so there's a macro conversation around water efficiency and power efficiency. That's right at hand here, and I think to the extent that that we could help pioneer waterless cooling technologies within this new frontier, tier, tier five data centers would be very exciting I think so too.
Speaker 1:I mean, I think that's where the conversation that's. That's why we uh, well, and we changed the name, should we talk about? We didn't say that. I think we could talk about it. Well, we kind of changed the name and you just said Frontier.
Speaker 1:We changed the name of our podcast and, you may have noticed, called the Frontier Line, and the idea being is that we want to have conversations around the frontier of all of this development, of energy, of infrastructure, of everything going on. Because, in order for us to affect change, I think most of us, as citizens, are like oh, the power will be dealt with, oh, that'll be dealt with. But as we step into this and trying to solve various things and do our own thing, we're realizing what an issue it is, which is part of the impetus for us saying like, let's talk about this, let's get this out there, because the more people talk about this, the more they're aware everybody I talk to has no clue as to what's going on. Energy wise, yeah, because you just, you just don't. You pay your power bill. You like, that's good, I got my power, that's good, yeah.
Speaker 1:And it's important to start these conversations because it's the only way some of these issues are going to be tackled is if we actually get it out there and, like other people, come into this mix and say and there and there are plenty already doing this saying how do we solve this, how do we better approach this? Because we want to have an advanced society where we do have all these amazing where we have, where we're the leader in ai. I mean, personally, I want, I want to see the US stay in the lead as far as AI is concerned and in order to do that, we have to have a robust infrastructure and in order to stay at the forefront of all of these things, we have to do this. And in order to do this, it's got to take an awareness of everybody to say, okay, this is why we're doing these things, this is why it's important.
Speaker 2:So it's kind of you know Well and as a developer, I'm always going to be advocating for the higher. To the extent we can improve efficiency, it will hasten our meeting the need. As long as we use these highly inefficient systems and we're consuming more power, we're just compounding our own problem. To the extent that we can reduce consumption of power and water and all the things, it's going to help us slowly build out the grid and slowly build out the power capacity. But there's a lot of focus that, as developers, ground-up designs needs to go into efficiency, absolutely Well and speaking of the ground-up, so this is.
Speaker 1:I'm going to read this list and I know you and I we've talked about a lot of these very things. So this is kind of the renewable side of Tier 5. Okay so, 100% renewable energy usage percent. Renewable energy usage powered entirely by renewable energy sources, such as solar, wind or hydropower, may involve on-site renewable energy generation and energy storage systems. Not shocking. I think 100 percent is hard and I'll tell you why. I mean this is where I look at this and go yes, and most groups that we know of that want to purchase power. Don't look at that mix of renewable as being base load power.
Speaker 2:Yeah, none of those are base load Yet, Unless you throw geothermal on that mix you don't have base load Right.
Speaker 1:And they're going to want a certain level of base load power. Unless you can prove that, say you have a industrial-sized battery backup that can last a long period of time that can account, yeah, longer than two to four hours, because that's not cutting it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's not cutting it right.
Speaker 1:And so I look at that and I think it's a phenomenal goal. But the reality is those sources and it's not us saying it aren't considered baseload yeah. And so… Even though, say, hyperscale might say, hey, I want 100% renewable, well, yeah, but they're also going to say, yes, but we also need baseload power, which means not this mix, unless it's coming in via line that is part solar, part hydro, but then if it's line power from a power source that can move stuff around, that might be considered, but again, it's usually a mix, it's not fully that. And then we've talked about the line problems, about connecting these power sources, and so there aren't enough of them.
Speaker 2:Well, the other thing I'm going to keep harping on just reading this statement 100% renewable energy usage in order to qualify for it to be a tier 5,. The reason that's never going to be attainable is because of power density. You're going to have these, these gigawatt consumer data centers, massive consumption data centers. Where are you going to put all that solar and that wind? There's not enough acreage on earth to build out just solar, just wind, just hydro to do that. It's a power density conversation before we get to transmission. Yeah, there's not enough acreage on earth to develop that much of those renewables, right, so you got to have a more dense power production in the mix. Geothermal could resolve that. Geothermal, could you know? Geothermal is probably the most promising thing, and we could also look at hydrogen fuel cells as an advanced power resource within a data center, if we're talking renewables.
Speaker 1:I agree, and that's what we're seeing on the geothermal front right now the ability to produce a massive amount of power very predictable, so much so that you already have we've talked about it a few times the project in central Utah already has power purchase agreements in place with, I believe, alphabet, and then also I forget the name of the company the Southern California Power Company. La Power and Light, yeah, They've already pre-purchased, I believe, and done a deal. Obviously, those two entities believe it's-.
Speaker 2:From the Cape Station geothermal plant.
Speaker 1:Right, they obviously are looking and going.
Speaker 1:Okay, we're very confident that you can produce this amount of power consistently over a period of time and so we're excited about that because one of our locations shares the same geography and we know we sit on it and we want to be able to tap that. And wherever we go, if it's possible, geothermal is obviously on our minds. So second one carbon neutral or carbon negative operations. Commitment to net zero carbon emissions through energy efficient designs, renewable energy use and carbon offset initiatives. Carbon negative operations. Commitment to net zero carbon emissions through energy efficient designs, renewable energy use and carbon offset initiatives. Some may go further to actively reduce carbon beyond neutrality. Totally right in our yeah, I love that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's kind of. We've been talking about that very thing Energy efficient design, incorporation of energy efficient cooling systems, liquid cooling, free air cooling, optimization of power usage effectiveness, often approaching or achieving a PUE of 1.0.
Speaker 2:Power usage effectiveness of 1.0.
Speaker 1:Yeah, water conservation Implementation of closed-loop cooling systems, water reuse technologies or even waterless cooling systems there we go To drastically reduce water consumption. Smart energy management systems use of AI and machine learning to monitor and optimize energy usage, dynamically minimizing waste and improving overall efficiency. On-site battery storage large-scale battery storage, utility-scale battery storage systems to store renewable energy for backup, reducing reliance on traditional fuel-based generators. Circular economy initiatives this is interesting because we've talked about this too. Yeah, focus on reducing waste by recycling hardware, repurposing heat generated by data centers for district heating, for instance, and employing modular components for easier upgrades and repairs.
Speaker 2:I really like that because that's one of the advantages of geothermal. And repairs. I really like that because that's one of the advantages of geothermal. When you dive into advanced geothermal you're hearing the term co-gen plant or co-generation plant. That's, a geothermal co-gen plant Not only produces power from that water brine but it's also capturing all of the heat from the process and providing district level heat. That's like, in case in point, in a small town that you know, in Fillmore, that we're working in. If we put a geothermal cogen plant in, we could potentially take the city from using natural gas heating and put them on to the you know, the geothermal cogen heating district plan and replace that as a more efficient way to heat homes and commercial buildings. So that's interesting.
Speaker 1:And then even from a development point of view, if we say we've got property and we would consider putting some agriculture possibly in the site because we've got this and it's a natural fit, as opposed to having to pull what you talked to, let's just say I'm going to go with I know, for example, to grow indoors for THC in the states that are legal, like here in Utah. It's a lot of power, oh yeah, it's a lot of power, and they're paying a lot Every month. It's a lot of power. Oh yeah, it's a lot of power and they're paying a lot Every month. And it's coming from your electrical. So to have to be able to heat consistently and do that in a way that's incredibly renewable is something very valuable kind of. As developers, we look at those. Okay, are there natural fits to other kinds of groups that might come in to, where they can leverage the existing technology scheme we have? Absolutely. So that's kind of how we think about things. You know it's not okay.
Speaker 1:Great, let's just get whoever we can get there, it's who actually might be able to benefit from being here, so that it's a we're getting this huge value because we're, you know, reducing their, their, you know their reliance on line power but then you know we can give them what they need at maybe a reduced rate, so competitively we'd be, we're more competitive than anywhere else and so we become a very attractive place to do this. I'm not even going to get into and if we do hydrogen and we have bioproduct, you know biochar byproducts and that goes into the soil and there's a lot of ways where these ecosystems can work, where a Valley Forge Impact Park can become its own ecosystem.
Speaker 2:Well, not to mention the underlying tax structures that we've curated for every site so that you've got federal level capital gains savings or elimination structure and state and local tax incentives. So when you start adding production tax credits, carbon tax credits and then some of these other real estate-based tax credits or business startup tax credit on top of all of these other things, we're talking about attracting tenants to these parks that are highly curated, highly screened, tenants that can take advantage and leverage all of the the macro plan. That's right of the park right now.
Speaker 1:It's that glad you brought it up because it is. There is the other side. There is that business side of things that we were, we're very mindful of and spent a lot of work doing uh for that very reason, so, uh, so we come uh down green building certifications, oh yeah we've you and I talked about this.
Speaker 1:So lead bream uh. Platinum you know platinum level focusing on energy savings, water efficiency, co2 emission reduction uh. Advanced heat recovery just talked about it uh, low environmental impact site selection Uh, I think, for the way you know what we're looking at, I think that it kind of fits with where we're picking anyway, yes, um, we're in in many cases, trying to take tracks of land that are, that are literally barren and not being used for anything. Um, uh, some might say barren, nice, but I'd say it could be better and actually turning it into something much, much, much better Absolutely Sustainable supply chain, commitment to eco-friendly, ethically sourced materials, working with suppliers who follow sustainable practices that right there, the supply chain is its own kind of as we know, kind of nightmare. I think that is that's going to be something that everybody's trying to solve at some point.
Speaker 1:It's not only is it sustainable supply chain, it's a supply chain yeah yeah, you know, having a supply chain that can actually efficiently supply on a pretty reasonable basis. You know the materials are going to be needed, which has also led us down to like how do, how can we solve that part of it? How can we help contribute to solving supply chain stuff? And I think we have some ideas on that too.
Speaker 2:Well, the other thing that comes to mind, dave, is as a developer and I, you know, as we have these conversations, my mind is always fixated on projects that we're doing currently, and one of the biggest, the critical, mission-critical things is how do we effectively inculcate local authorities to these standards, to these understandings and knowledge? Because many of the communities that we're entering are doing things very, very old school, very traditionally Well, if it's working, if it's not broken, don't fix it mentality, and so reprogramming and reintroducing all this new pioneering stuff. It's a lot to absorb, right, but it's a major hurdle to cross over to effectively develop this.
Speaker 1:I agree, and I think part of that is you can change the infrastructure without changing the lifestyle right in these communities. You don't want people to love these communities for what they are, but that doesn't mean that your energy has to come from, you know, from non-renewables or or these places that are just not efficient. It doesn't mean you have to do, you have to have these things. It doesn't mean maybe your water system in your city has to be the water that you're you know from culinary. It means maybe it could be from something that is being recycled and used and used and that's being supplied by an industrial partner, right, so that doesn't change the way of life. It just changes and makes life better. It makes life more doable in the modern society. It makes it, we think, more economically robust for those communities.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you for bringing the research on the tier five.
Speaker 1:That's so exciting and it's great to have you. It was a lot of academic talk but we felt like it was important to kind of you know, we talk about tier, we talk about data centers a lot, we talk about the different tiers, and we felt it was important to do a deep dive into, kind of what the differences are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I thought it was. I enjoyed it. I hadn't had such a clear perspective on the different tiers, and so appreciate you bringing that to the table.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you, it's been fun to talk about.
Speaker 2:Well, I think that's a wrap. It is a wrap, thanks for listening.
Speaker 1:Thank you, we'll see you next time.
