Jim Fitzgerald [email protected]
Hey Steve -
I heard about the AI datacenter thing the city is considering and guess it’s up for discussion tonight? I wasn’t aware that was an issue in our city. As a former datacenter owner myself (Internet services company) I’m quite aware of whats involved with datacenters, AI or otherwise.
A few thoughts:
1) Is somoene actually looking to do this in our city? Most of San Diego county being crippled with SDG&E and the highest power rates in the nation (and closest to the highest in the world) I can’t imagine any datacenter of any kind would even want to build here. So, are AI datacenters even an issue for us? It seems like quite a stretch to imagine ...
2) If it is an issue to take up.. heres a thought, instead of banning them outright, you could create an ordinance that they have to participate in energy supply for our city. As you likely know the feds have cleared the way for these kinds of datacenter to generate their own onsite power. It would be a boon to our city if a datacenter could be allowed here conditional on bringing its own power and contributing back to our city’s power supply. Anything that could offset SDG&E’s debilitating rates would be fantastic for our community.
Just a thought before outright banning them. There’s a lot of money there if one of those companies truly took an interest in our city.
Best
-Jim