Data centers need power, but gas is expensive and slow to connect. Solar and batteries can be a cheaper source of baseload power but the economics remain highly regional, favoring sunny markets with high gas prices.
In Spain, Saudi Arabia, India and China, solar-plus-storage can deliver baseload power for much of the year at a competitive cost due to abundant sunlight and cheap equipment.
In the US, cheap gas means solar-plus-storage is only competitive for meeting half of annual demand, outside of California. Batteries here tend to be used for power price arbitrage and resilience, rather than for firm power.
Land is a key constraint, and the space required for solar-plus-storage systems to meet full baseload needs can often prove prohibitive. In the UK’s data center hotspot of Slough, solar and storage can meet 70% of an annual 100MW baseload at a competitive cost with a combined cycle gas turbine, but the plant would take up half of the city.
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