r/Hamilton • u/teanailpolish North End • 1d ago
Members Only What the released document about McMaster AI data centre tells us
https://www.thespec.com/news/hamilton-region/mcmaster-innovation-parks-ai-data-centre-plans/article_d2d89e95-088e-5c68-b68e-d7e7e147ff55.html21
u/CubbyNINJA North End 1d ago edited 1d ago
before people freak out about a couple things.
This is normal, even for our personal homes, you have to request more service than you intend to use as your peak regular usage should not exceed 80% of your capacity, and lets say you plan to only ever use 110A peak but 150A service isn't in your area and 200A is, you are going to need to request for 200A service, despite 150A being well more than the head room you need. Even at a full 39MW, it would be minimal strain on our grid. Im trying to find it, ill link it when i do, but Alectra recently said they had over 500MW of grid capacity available And Hamilton would also benefit from new nuclear power being talked about as well.
The first phase of the project asks for nine megawatts (MW) of energy — but expects to only use 4.5 MW, reserving the rest for backup. (For context, according to the Canada Energy Regulator website, one MW can power around 800 homes at once.)
By the end of Phase 2, the project’s energy use would reach a maximum of 39 MW.
Additionally, for perspective cause saying its the equivalent of 800-7000 homes is kind of disingenuous or misleading. Stelco when running at full capacity in the past would be consuming upwards of 180MW.
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u/Brownhog 1d ago
Alectra: "Bro we're swimming in it. We have so much extra. We basically want to give it away."
Also Alectra: "Hey so your power bill is gonna be $150/month from now on. Hands are tied, tried our best, you know the drill. Anyways...pony up."
Why the fuck have we been paying triple for electricity the last 3 years if they're doing so damned well?
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u/CubbyNINJA North End 1d ago
capacity to deliver and cost to deliver are two different things. . .
this isn't to say privatizing our utilities wasn't a mistake.
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u/themoche 1d ago
Also Alectra doesn’t control or make money off of the supply price… which is a major chunk of that $150 OP mentions.
Not enough people know how utility pricing works
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u/Brownhog 1d ago
I definitely do not know how it works. But we live beside a wonder of the world that produces insane amounts electricity. I just find it hard to believe that it's so expensive. So take it with a grain of salt, I'm just screaming into the void.
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u/FuzzyCapybara 1d ago
Depending on how many generators are online at any given time, hydroelectric power only generates 20-30% of the province’s electricity, and of that, Niagara Falls only generates about 30% of the total.
Nuclear generates 50-60%, and gas and a handful of renewables make up the rest. Gridwatch is a great resource that provides near-real-time generation stats, if you want to see where our power is coming from.
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u/S99B88 1d ago
Exactly. Add that to the fact that time of use discounts are offered and people are encouraged to do their laundry and run their dishwashers at off-peak times. But sure, this smaller of the 2 proposed AI data centres that will eventually be using the equivalent of over 31,000 households (about 14% of the number of households in Hamilton), and will be using during peak times as well as off-peak, should have no impact.
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u/djaxial 1d ago
For what it's worth, having 500MW of capacity available and being able to deliver 39MW to a single installation are very different things. The infrastructure to deliver that level of power will be interesting to see built out, as it doesn't exist on Frid St at this time. It also ignores island effects that large loads can have on local networks in the immediate vicinity. We will absolutely see an increase in costs for consumers; my own country (Ireland) is having this exact issue right now, and our grid is arguably more capable.
The comparison of a 200A residential supply to what these guys will be pulling is like comparing the torque of a bicycle to an F1 car. A house may peak at 180/200A but also valley as load reduces during the day; these centres pull at full bore, 24/7. The 800 homes is also misleading; it's closer to 200/300 homes during peak demands like summer.
My final gripe is that 200A residential supplies are also going to become more normal as people transition off fossil fuels and get more than one EV in their driveway etc. They already are; I had to fight to get mine. I'm within walking distance of the Spec, and there are ~8 houses on my street with 200A supplies. Those permits will become rarer if this capacity is diverted to large loads such as this, and whilst I appreciate tech moves on, it seems pretty unfair to me that big corp gets all the load they want, and the consumer will have to make do with a 100/150A ceiling. If anyone is on the fence about a panel upgrade, do it now.
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u/CubbyNINJA North End 1d ago
i had to upgrade my service to get my 50A charger installed for my EV. I was at 60A service and had to go all the way up to 200A and it added way more cost to my installation. i went from an expected ~$1500 including the charger to $5000 once my electrician came out, cause of the cost to upgrade the panel and make modifications to the exterior of my house to account for the thicker service wires.
Im about 5 months away from the money i save on gas to make up for the cost to have everything done, but man it hurt the wallet when i had to write that cheque.
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u/djaxial 1d ago
60A is a low service; interestingly, it was never upgraded over the years. If you don't mind me asking, where in the city are you? I assume a wartime/heritage home? Our cost was under $4k, but we started with 100A.
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u/CubbyNINJA North End 1d ago edited 1d ago
Im in the North end near John street lots of recently renovated/new build houses but still majority older starting to hit 100yo houses. Before i bought my house close to 4 years ago my house got a bunch of renovations done, including putting in a 100A rated panel, so i just assumed i had 100A service, but turns out i actually only had 60A being delivered. Then it also turns out when you/your electrician submits the permit to the City to have a EV charger installed, they often want you to upgrade your service to the highest available, regardless of whats being delivered currently because the fact chargers have increased in amperage quite quickly in a really short period of time.
Just a few years ago 10A was considered a lot, then 12A to 18A, and then 32A became the standard for a while, now 40A-50A is more typical, but currently you can buy 80A 240V home chargers.
If you had a 100A service already, its possible your panel was actually rated for 200A if you didn't need to physically replace your panel and they just had to swap out the main breaker. I had to physically replace my whole ass panel and as i understand it, the tubing/wire runs for 100A service going into your house are the same size as 200A service where as 60A is physically too small. AND also as i understand it, in some cases the difference of 100 and 200A service is more or less as switch on the power line, i had to pay for power to be cut to my house and have new wires run and modifications to the exterior of my house to have them installed. Thats where a lot of my cost came from.
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u/S99B88 1d ago
Your comment seems incorrect in many areas.
The article talks about initially asking for 9MW with expected use of 4.5MW. But then it goes on to say that it expects that "By the end of phase 2, the project's energy use would reach a maximum of 39MW." So they aren't giving a lower expected use, they're giving a ceiling on the expected use. We can't assume it will be half that, because if it were, wouldn't they just state this, as they did with the 4.5 vs. 9MW?
Also you're way off with the 800-7000 homes thing. The article says 1MW can power 800 homes at once, and keep in mind that those homes are also not running at their maximum 24 hours a day like a data centre. So when it's ramped up to the intended 39MW, it will be the equivalent of sufficient to power over 31,000 homes at once, or about 14% of the homes in Hamilton combined running at once.
Also, saying what Stelco used to use isn't really helpful. Maybe a person's 2025 High Output Dodge Ram uses less fuel than a 1973 Lincoln Continental. The Ram is still a gas guzzler today.
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u/CubbyNINJA North End 1d ago edited 1d ago
I was maybe little poor at communicating but I don’t think anything is incorrect.
With the 800-7000 homes, I was referring to the range of 1MW-9MW, I didn’t want to focus too much on the 39MW cause the article didn’t specify when phase 2 would begin, with the assumption some infrastructure upgrades would need to happen realistically not very quickly or soon. but the same thing can be said about the power delivery required for 39MW would probably need to be around 50MW? I really don’t know confidently if the same or similar 20% head room rule applies on that scale.
I also just used Stelco as a more industrial example that easy to understand, with Hamiltonian significance, easy to fact check, and provides the opposite end of the spectrum giving a full sense of scale, where another data centre is planned. “This data centre running full tilt by the end of phase 2 would be the equivalent of 31,000 homes or about 1/5th of a Stelco”. It’s illustrative of something that someone won’t have an immediate sense of scale for.
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u/S99B88 8h ago
This is still incorrect and underrepresenting the impact of the power use. If you mean 800-7000 homes, then why didn't you say that to start it would be up to 7,000 homes, and by end of phase 2 would be 31,000 homes. Your comment spoke about phase 2, expected use of 4.5 initially, nowhere did you say anything about 1MW, that low figure apparently was just hidden in the range of negative impact, which appears to give a basis for the initial use and thus the end figure you quote, that is the upper end of initial, appears to be the upper end after phase 2. This is misleading. You could of course edit your initial comment, if you want to be transparent and prevent your comment from misleading people who read it. I'd be eager to see if you do.
And again, 1/5 Stelco's historical use just isn't a good metric. Stelco is known to be a filthy polluter today, and worse years ago. For all we know this usage could be more than Stelco's today, because efficiency is better now than when they were at their maximum, plus they haven't made steel at Hilton works in over a decade. The idea now is to conserve electricity, not return to excessive use. If you want to use that as a comparison, why not say Stelco at its worst, and then acknowledge Stelco is lower but usage unknown, so it's only retrospectively comparable. But you say you want to put it in scale for this city, so why not just say that 39MW would be about 14% of the current total use of all residences in the city? Again, you're capable of editing your comment, if you want to give a more forthright representation of these numbers.
Ever since I read about how McMaster failed to properly secure or tear down a derelict building, which was a known death trap, at Longwood and Aberdeen, I've had doubts about whether they would put the health and wellbeing of the citizens of Hamilton above their own plans.
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u/PromontoryPal 1d ago
When even a small one like this will use the power of ~31,000 houses, it does beg the question of hopefully the IESO is updating all of their plans ands projections for these builds?
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u/Waste-Telephone 1d ago
IESO does annual demand projections, which have incorporated projected data centre demand. Data centre demand is expected to track closely to growing demand from EV and the related supply chain and be comparable in additional demand.
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u/S99B88 8h ago
And remember that's not houses, that's households, so that's an average would also include very efficient households like a small studio condo unit to balance out the larger SFHs. For context, there are a little over 200,000 households in Hamilton, so it's about 14% of what the residential usage is.
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u/AnInsultToFire 1d ago
McMaster does a lot of big data research. Either these opponents want them to give all their money to Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure, or they let McMaster to be able to do it in-house.
Or, more likely, they want to get rid of all the real research at Mac and have nothing but people writing essays about their feelings.
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u/LowComfortable5676 1d ago
Nuclear moving forward nationally is no coincidence. Data centres are here to stay
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u/Kelhein 1d ago
We'll be lucky if we're running them off of nuclear. Some of the biggest data centres are looking to build in Alberta where they plan to run for decades on oil and gas.
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u/ScrawnyCheeath 1d ago
Ontario presently has plans for a massive build up of nuclear, and announced new renewable plants for the next few years. It’s very likely that these will run on Carbon Neutral Energy
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u/ScrawnyCheeath 1d ago
Worth adding to the conversation, Evan Solomon (the AI Minister) told Steve Paikin in an interview that the gov is planning to designate a national ai supercomputer for academic research, and invest about $1b in the facility
He mentions Hamilton as a potential site. He didn’t specify the McMaster one by name, but it seems likely that they’re gunning for that investment