1. In future years, the growth of AI will require much more...

1. In future years, the growth of AI will require much more power in the grid, than current demands = much more gas-fired power will be needed, for the grid. Bodes well, eventually, for Australia- which the Fed. ALP govt. & Resource Minister M. King has recently, again acknowledged.

STO will also, obviously, be a major beneficiary.

bbc.com C. Baraniuk 21.5.24 said

"There’s a big problem with generative AI, says Sasha Luccioni at Hugging Face, a machine-learning company. Generative AI is an energy hog...

“When you use Generative AI… it’s generating content from scratch, it’s essentially making up answers,” Dr Luccioni explains. That means the computer has to work pretty hard

A Generative AI system might use around 33 times more energy than machines running task-specific software,according to a recent studyby Dr Luccioni and colleagues. The work has been peer-reviewed but is yet to be published in a journal.

It’s not your personal computer that uses all this energy, though. Or your smartphone. The computations we increasingly rely on happen in giant data centres that are, for most people, out of sight out and of mind".

Electricity grids creak as AI demands soar (bbc.com)




2. More massive problems in the Snowy Mark 2 Hydro project- original budget c.$2b, now well over $12b...& growing. Farce.

abc.net.au M. Clarke 22.5.24 said

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  "Tunnelling problems are plaguing the $12 billion Snowy 2.0 hydropower project, with a boring machine previously bogged in soft ground now wedged in hard rock and struggling to move...
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Multiple sources have told the ABC the situation is more serious than has been publicly acknowledged by Snowy Hydro and could take weeks or even months before normal drilling resumes.

"Wedged the thing in good and proper" one source said, with another simply saying, "It's f****d."

Tunnel boring machine wedged in hard rock, leaving Snowy 2.0 hydropower project with new issues - ABC News