The Hidden Energy Crisis Powering Your ChatGPT Search
00;00;00;03 - 00;00;22;11
Unknown
Hello and welcome to energy 101. Today we have Sean Cotter from Energy Acres and he's all the way here from Florida. Florida. Yeah. Cool. Well, welcome. It's currently, a hurricane outside. Sounds like it. You're. No, you know, you're used to that, right? So, unfortunately, gotten pretty used to it, but Houston is the same. Yeah. Oh, God, I know.
00;00;22;15 - 00;00;40;03
Unknown
So, you know, if you hear, like, chaos and, like, cats and dogs outside, that's totally normal. Just, just a typical day in your spring of, Houston, Texas here. So let's get into it. So we have a great origin back story. We have a success of selling to a big, large company that a lot of you might be familiar with.
00;00;40;08 - 00;00;57;23
Unknown
And we have what you're currently doing. And we can get into the whole data center, stuff like that. So I might I might label this as like a data center episode, but we'll kind of go all over the place like we do as we are here at energy 101. But first, let's kind of get, the backstory. So you're actually not from Florida, you're from Ohio.
00;00;57;26 - 00;01;24;15
Unknown
And you, you know, I heard I heard you on our Power Hour with Todd. You said you were kind of a software guy, but it sounds like you were raised kind of like a good old blue collar Ohio hands on oil and gas family. What's the whole back story there? Backstory. Sixth generation farmer. Do we had 200 head of cattle that we raised, as well as the main family business was oil and gas.
00;01;24;17 - 00;01;48;29
Unknown
Parents started it in the early 80s. We continued on, grew it in the 2000s and mostly divested, you know, from oil and gas at this point. Really. I grew up in the fields. So I know Ohio has big oil background and stuff like that. So y'all are owning the land, the farmland, doing agriculture, and then decided to tap into the resources that happened to be underneath you.
00;01;48;29 - 00;02;18;19
Unknown
Is that pretty much it. That did happen, but that wasn't, you know, I, I think my dad saw the writing on the wall. You're not going to. There's only so much you can do being a farmer. So that never really left. He saw the opportunity to in in oil and gas. And he talked to some neighbor farms and convince them to invest and let them drill on their property so that that was, a few neighbor farms.
00;02;18;21 - 00;02;39;19
Unknown
It's how the oil and gas got got started. That was really an independent, you know, business. We just happened to have oil and gas wells on our property that were drilled previously. Clearly, it was an interesting story because the Discovery Channel network came out and did a series around this whole thing going on in your life. I mean, what was that like?
00;02;39;19 - 00;03;05;14
Unknown
What was your age? How did this happen? Do you know, like how you were you even approached it. Yeah. That's we we, through the course of, discovery TV show, you learn a lot about reality TV. They were actually discovery was searching. They must put out kind of postings that it would be really interesting if we had an oil and gas company in a family company on on a show.
00;03;05;16 - 00;03;28;01
Unknown
So we we were approached. I think there were other people in Ohio that that were approached. We probably had some indication of, maybe slightly unstable or there could, be some reality TV here. And then if we move forward. This was after my dad passed. And so, you know, seen seemed like a good idea at the time.
00;03;28;01 - 00;03;54;16
Unknown
I, I think we learned a lot, but I wouldn't say that the show was a success. It certainly didn't, produce more oil for us. Right. But. So who was involved? Your dad passed during, production or right before, kind of before my dad passing, kind of amidst, second wave of growth with castor oil. And in 2010, I think the show was in 2013.
00;03;54;16 - 00;04;23;07
Unknown
So a couple of years after and that was maybe part of part of the story they were trying to capture, you know, that that was the lead up to shale. And so it was kind of, like a small oil company against the big oil. And that really wasn't the reality in the state. But it's it's what they like to portray, I guess, in it, you know, for the project, they that discovery wanted to focus entirely on drilling.
00;04;23;10 - 00;04;46;11
Unknown
And there's just there was so much more to the family business than just the drilling process of oil and gas. Yeah. The timing so weird because it's like everyone's realizing horizontal drilling and fracturing and, it's like literally a whole revolution. Yeah. Meanwhile, they're like, oh, you job. It's cool. How does that work? Yeah. As like, hey, buddy, you should go over here and see what they're doing in Pennsylvania.
00;04;46;15 - 00;05;12;24
Unknown
Right? What are you doing? Like plugging wells. Like, you have to, what's the whole life cycle? And, like, let's, you know, it it, we saw it as an opportunity. We would be able to tell more more of the story. You know, if you've been producing a long enough and oil and gas, you know, you've dealt with the press in a negative way that doesn't portray, you know, the the business or the operation anywhere accurately.
00;05;12;24 - 00;05;33;25
Unknown
And, you know, it was a way to at least try to get some of that. Right. It was largely I was amidst building my my first startup, fielding. So my presence on the show, I think I might only be in the fourth episode. Yeah. So I have a, cameo. It was mainly my older brother and younger brother were the two main characters.
00;05;33;27 - 00;05;54;23
Unknown
So they were running the show. They were running the show. My older brother was really running the oil and gas company kind of spearheaded, the urban. We did a lot of urban drill, 120 wells, urban wells in, in the 2000. Oh, cool. Okay. So, I mean, I'm going to watch that. I'm going to check it out as I'm assuming it's hard to find.
00;05;54;25 - 00;06;17;15
Unknown
Or is it like public on YouTube? It's on Amazon now. Like you can just. Yeah, it's I did they did they buy discovery. Yeah. They paid they, they paid per episode on it. That was all negotiated up front. And you know, in the end we didn't. It's probably like a wash. Like what we got paid, what else we did because of that or like prepping for it.
00;06;17;18 - 00;06;34;21
Unknown
But we got our boat wrapped like there was also other promotions out of it that that we took advantage of. So we still have a nice boat wrap on our boat with a big, pump jack and everything on it because they were going to film a fishing show and then they ended up canceling. You know, they didn't film that one.
00;06;34;26 - 00;06;53;06
Unknown
I mean, it should be interesting. And I'm going to take it as like an educational thing for me, who's a under a video guy here. So like, I literally go out the wells and stuff like that and, and I do my own production, okay. And you're going to love it then there's no one, you know, there's no one on like a vlog, YouTube level style who goes out to these sites and makes content like this.
00;06;53;06 - 00;07;10;05
Unknown
So like, I kind of like I don't really have inspiration when I go out there, so I need to watch other people, stuff like that to get these ideas. Like, I'm literally going to Brazil in May to go out into like the rural, like Petro areas and like, you know, this could help me prep and, make some interesting people out there.
00;07;10;05 - 00;07;44;22
Unknown
Well, do it know and there's a lot of comic relief, on on the show, too. I would say it was. It was also maybe a little way for the, a lot of it is like, dramatized. But there was, some truth to some of those arguments that that were going on. Yeah, yeah. How did you go from like, Ohio Farmer Discovery Channel to the software writing and selling to what I said is like a well known company quorum.
00;07;44;22 - 00;08;15;22
Unknown
Like, how the hell does that transition happen? I knew I was going to build a company no matter what. I was going to start a company, and it was just a matter of time. So I put everything I could into, getting the best projects put together for the family business, drilling what is largely close ology. And then we were as we were growing, we ran into operational issues and production issues.
00;08;15;22 - 00;08;36;28
Unknown
I look at what was on the market and I and this is amidst, you know, I'm, I have a full time job. I'm consulting at the time doing a lot of stuff remote, and moonlighting and coding on the energy software to really just try to make the family business work better. But in the back of my mind, I knew maybe this is going to turn into something.
00;08;37;02 - 00;09;07;28
Unknown
You know, I want to I want to build everything. So it could be a product someday. When, you know, shale was kind of taken off. We had already done a lot of automation on our wells and figured it out. So, you know, when you when you're drilling in an elementary school in Cleveland and because someone soldier, you know, Chinese rods, rods part blew out of the hole and it like it didn't end up becoming a catastrophe.
00;09;07;28 - 00;09;32;09
Unknown
But it could have been. And after that, or like we just had to figure it out. So it was a lot of grit. What parts work? How do we build it? At the time, the cloud was coming out and your mobile phone was just hitting, so I was like, if I make this work better for the family business, I'll pick up the other companies that the family business works with.
00;09;32;11 - 00;09;58;14
Unknown
I added, you know, company after a company went through Appalachia, then moved the Midcontinent, then moved the Rockies. By 2015, we had 120 different oil and gas companies that were customers. And we had both, you know, a field production system and some data. So we we were the first to kind of combine both of those because they just should be combined.
00;09;58;16 - 00;10;25;01
Unknown
You know, why are we why don't we have a sensor and and we take this other data and we put like these are different systems. They should be the same because the guy in the field needs the same numbers. You know, whoever's looking at the field needed needed the same numbers. So we we really cut our teeth. Helping the early shale producers learn how to produce, going from, you know, Gulfport was one of our first big customers.
00;10;25;04 - 00;10;45;23
Unknown
We we helped them get to a BCF and a half a day, you know, from from almost zero. You learn a lot. You just solve problems for them, you know, make it a better system. We kept doing that until Corum called me one day. Corum? Yeah. So, who is Corum? Because I hear the name a lot seem in articles similar newsletters, you know.
00;10;45;23 - 00;11;09;09
Unknown
What were they back then? What are they doing now? We don't have to, like, praise them or give them a shout out. Just technically, what do they do? Corum is a lot of back office counting. They now have a stack that spans virtually every part of the energy value chain from upstream to, land system to sending a bill for, you know, your heating bill at your house.
00;11;09;09 - 00;11;35;19
Unknown
You know, it's going to come from their software, a lot of pipeline, a lot of accounting software at the time, it was mostly back office. So I knew of them because of that. But they had no experience in operations. They had no. They were in Silver Lake at the time, wanted them to get into more of operations. They wanted to grow, become more of a cloud company, more of a SaaS company.
00;11;35;21 - 00;12;01;06
Unknown
And that's what my company was. So we were the first of a handful of acquisitions that helped Corum grow and, you know, then swallow up several more companies. So I would say Corum is, a conglomerate energy software company. All right. Boring, I mean, exciting. So they you are one of many companies. They're just buying out and adding to their toolbelt right now.
00;12;01;07 - 00;12;18;14
Unknown
So how does that I mean, at the end of the day, it's an amazing pay day, an amazing moment. Like, what is that moment like, is it obvious leading up? I mean, there's a lot of hype here at Callide. You know, it's like this could happen. This can happen like when did this can happen, this can happen, turn into OSHA, this is happening.
00;12;18;16 - 00;12;47;22
Unknown
And when the what was decision time like? Well, until you get a real offer. And then my lawyer tells me, oh, this is a legit offer. It's not really real. Yeah. How it happens. Like, many times you get calls on the phone, people kicking the tires, and they want IoT. They want, you know, some flavor of what the company is.
00;12;47;25 - 00;13;12;11
Unknown
So I had a few kind of knock out questions and have you pass those, and I kept talking. Otherwise I. I wouldn't waste my time because I had customers to support. So I would say I, I knew at least what my requirements were of getting it acquired early because I had a target of what I was heading towards, and we got acquired before series A.
00;13;12;13 - 00;13;35;20
Unknown
Wow. So I use that to my advantage in negotiation. Right. We're going to be raising series A in six months. We're not having this conversation. So either we work to get this deal done. And I had someone to one of the my my sales guy tried to kill the deal, didn't want to go with the deal.
00;13;35;23 - 00;13;59;21
Unknown
We switched it to an asset sale. Had to go through a, lots of stress, but we got got it across the finish line because the company was early, and it was really just, you know, kind of my decision. So it wasn't what I had planned, but that was the best move I made. I learned so much and work with so many great people at quorum.
00;13;59;24 - 00;14;24;19
Unknown
Yeah, it was it was amazing experience to kind of take it all the way for life cycle. Then try to help the other companies at quorum integrated and acquired. How do you make that go smoother? Better? You know, it got to happen. Yeah. Of course. So I like everything is moving so fast that the shale revolution and all the tech's advancing.
00;14;24;19 - 00;14;51;09
Unknown
Right. So it's like you're probably worried about competitors too. Or if someone can build what y'all built, is that the case? It did happen a lot. And there were competitive situations where because IoT was brand new and there were we were bootstrapped. We had companies that were much better funded and had a lot more resources. But in the end, like we knew our business, our customers were going to be essential.
00;14;51;09 - 00;15;18;17
Unknown
We're an operational tool that they can't live without. You can't get your operation does not work unless we are running. That's where we aim to be. It's a good product, so just focus there. If you just like a relentless about that, you know, it's really hard to get if you're solving real problems for operations. It's just noise like operations in oil and gas like runs the show because that pays everyone's bills.
00;15;18;20 - 00;15;39;27
Unknown
So we just kept solving problems for operations. So I mean, this is a basic startup question when you get bought out by the big boys, but it's like you're raising your baby your whole life and then you sell it to them and it's like, do you take the check and go, or do you help them integrate it? And it sounded like you kind of transition like that.
00;15;39;27 - 00;16;10;22
Unknown
How does that look like, and when do you eventually leave and go sit on a beach for the rest of your life? Retired at 30? Well, I didn't choose that path, so I don't think that ever happens. We got bored early. So what I learned, you're. If you're a small company, they're buying you. The product doesn't survive without you, and you have to get it to a certain point.
00;16;10;24 - 00;16;46;19
Unknown
So I learned that along the way. I mean, it's it really sucks, actually. You know, it's when the most valuable thing you created is not even used. It is now turned off. The quorum never ended up using it. What? And it's like you don't even realize what you had like, but in the end, you know, you just have to accept it, though I, I was required to do two years a stay for four because I, I chose to stick around.
00;16;46;22 - 00;17;08;04
Unknown
I thought I could do more good being a pain in the ass to people, but still like push the product, do more good in that four years sticking around. But I really had to like give up, you know, on what I was building. And it's kind of like a kid, you know, you kind of, Wow, that's that's all that's ever going to do.
00;17;08;06 - 00;17;27;16
Unknown
It's not what I wanted. Not the vision that I thought it could be. Just got to be okay with it going. And that's maybe for any founder, I would say, like, I really think through that, like, understand where you're going to get it, make life a lot easier. I knew going in that I was going to do that.
00;17;27;18 - 00;17;50;17
Unknown
So I didn't you know, that's not what held me back or was like kept me from making a decision. Wow. Okay. So you're there for four years and how do we like how do you you have a boss now, right? Or you you're kind of like, oh, this guy knows what he's doing. Let's let him do whatever the hell he wants.
00;17;50;20 - 00;18;27;17
Unknown
And what leads to you exiting? Eventually, quorum was acquired. So I, I spent about two years getting all the field operations off of my plate and another couple of years integrating and spending a lot of time deep in R&D and AI and kind of how we rethink the whole quorum platform. But, you know, when you're, when there's a another transaction and you kind of at that point you're deciding, do I want to do this for another 4 or 5 years like this?
00;18;27;19 - 00;18;51;21
Unknown
Do I want to keep putting 90% of my energy in something, and only ending up with 10% of the value that I know I'm capable of creating? I gotta leave, like, even if it's going to be painful. You know, I didn't realize how lonely it would be for the next several years, because you're really, like removing yourself from the whole team.
00;18;51;24 - 00;19;15;21
Unknown
Like everyone that you have worked with is now like cut off, gone. I wasn't prepared for that. I didn't really think about that as much. I don't think a lot of people talk about that. From your position. So what happens in between leaving there and starting Energy Acres? Is there something in between? Lots of mistakes. Okay, well, we can gloss over that.
00;19;15;23 - 00;19;42;02
Unknown
So long. Yeah, I got involved in, a number of startups thinking that tech was was my impact on the world. I was going to have, only to finding that I had to go all the way back to my roots to, energy and food and largely farming. What I had spent my lifetime avoiding, largely getting into tech was avoiding that.
00;19;42;02 - 00;20;05;04
Unknown
You know, I'm a farmer. You know, I come from energy. Like I build a company in energy. But now I'm going to go do something else. And I did those things, and I tried out of the things, and I really realized that I, I do my best work when I'm working on my thing, not other people's things. And I can't do my best work of my heart's not in my thing.
00;20;05;06 - 00;20;30;22
Unknown
So I started cutting things away and, focusing more and more of my energy on, you know, where where my passion and purpose kind of aligned, which is what leads Energy Acres or. Yeah, what led to Energy Acres. So first off, is it energy with an eye energy with an eye for intelligence? Or if you want to get really fanatical about it, AI is in there.
00;20;30;22 - 00;20;53;10
Unknown
Just reversed, you know. Yeah. So is it worth explaining to everyone how to spell it? Yeah. And energy. And instead of the why, just add and I not many times you say that I want I, I say that I actually say that a lot to to my eyes to train them and they've, they've, they now remember the, the spelling.
00;20;53;10 - 00;21;08;20
Unknown
Yeah. You got two views. Yeah. No I love that. It's like just a random aside, we have our nephew Matt Maxwell. I know Jackson, and it's like we wanted to do Jackson with an X, and then it's like, well, then his his whole life is going to have to say it's one an X, but it's different. It's unique.
00;21;08;20 - 00;21;28;13
Unknown
It's a it's a, it's a traditional name with the modern twist. And then in your case, you know, you actually have like a purpose, like the eye, standing for something. But it's like, you know, that balancing act always. Yeah. You need a.com domain to, you know, to just do the things. Right. So it, it it worked. It was a way of blending really.
00;21;28;13 - 00;21;49;20
Unknown
Like all of me. The SEO helps, right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I'm energy, I'm farming. I'm also tech. So it's kind of all of it. Yeah I love it. So let's get into Energy Acres. What the hell is that? What are they doing there? And then, I have a feeling that will kind of feed into the big, more relatable issues we can get into for the rest of the episode.
00;21;49;22 - 00;22;16;03
Unknown
So Energy acres is an energy infrastructure company, so think of us like a land developer plus power plant developer. We put large projects together, we energize data center campuses, and we do it in a much more sustainable way. And we do it with a model that takes the waste energy, leveraging technology built by oil and gas to make our projects circular.
00;22;16;03 - 00;22;35;21
Unknown
We and by doing that, we grow more food where people live. So our our projects, we make it easy for a data center to be built, a power plant to be built, and a greenhouse to be built. What exactly is a greenhouse? Because I see that, a lot just recently. Look in your things up. There's a spectrum of types of greenhouses, really.
00;22;35;21 - 00;23;00;02
Unknown
We're sealing the outside environment from the inside, and we're keeping we want to, we want to make use of all of the free energy from the sun and then make up for everything else. Given the plants inside the best possible chance to grow the most. That's what we want. So that's providing the right temperature, the right CO2 in the atmosphere, the right heat, the right amount of water and nutrients.
00;23;00;05 - 00;23;20;20
Unknown
Do all of that. So that's, you know, greenhouse is the place where you grow food, right? Okay. Because I like literal where plants are inside the greenhouse. Yeah. Just a term that comes up more like more like diverse when it comes to talking about energy. Because they have different ones. They have like the cheap poop houses. There's actually a bunch of greenhouses right over here.
00;23;20;20 - 00;23;42;25
Unknown
Yeah, I just saw, so they have, you know, those, you know, you're not going to heat and and keep them sealed as much because it's, you know, exposed. Right. So you're, fixing another problem in your career and that it has to line up again with timing, like the data center thing is hot right now. It is an issue.
00;23;42;25 - 00;24;07;13
Unknown
And y'all are tackling it, right? Y'all are doing it. We are so, you know, we actually get people in the comments all the time whenever we post a clip about AI and, these data centers and stuff. And, you know, they're saying it's eating the electricity, it's making their bills go up. Personally, as AI consumers and just in general, like, are y'all touching on stuff like that?
00;24;07;13 - 00;24;34;07
Unknown
It's all true. Yeah. Data centers are absolutely making the power bill go up. They're absolutely taking water resources from communities that wherever they're built, that's definitely happening. And, are we screwed? What's going on? Well, we don't have to be. We have to respond to it, where we have gotten the. We don't know how to build infrastructure in this country anymore.
00;24;34;10 - 00;25;02;05
Unknown
At the scale that that we we need to build it right now. The utilities, the power companies, they're not built for speed. They're not built for building lots of power plants. We don't do that on a day to day basis. That's what we're we're being asked to do. And it showed up in Ohio first where there ends up being a backlog of projects, and then you just don't have enough power to do the project.
00;25;02;05 - 00;25;31;14
Unknown
And that's kind of where we where we've gotten to, some of the other, you know, water. Those are a little easier to solve problem wise. But power is not, that that we have to move to a decentralized, behind the meter, approach. It is impossible to meet the power demand of. I said we, like, take this from a, regulatory stance.
00;25;31;14 - 00;25;53;13
Unknown
Should we have the private companies fix this? But what is like, the most reasonable actions we're taking now and within the next few years? I like, partial to the state because it's happening, but I like what Ohio's doing. It's different than than Texas. And there's still regulated. So if you're not the utility, you can't build a power plant.
00;25;53;18 - 00;26;15;07
Unknown
Well, they've changed that. They've now made it easier to not just have one customer. We can have three customers. So we can have the scale of building one power plant, centralizing all of that effort. And we can feed multiple customers. So that's a regulatory change of change. The law that that that moves it. But that's just the start.
00;26;15;07 - 00;26;33;02
Unknown
Like we need that at every level at the local level, at the county level, at the state level. And the feds are doing what they can. But most of this, what slows down or impacts these projects is state, local and and so it's, it's a bottom up approach we need. Is it as broad as, like the grid.
00;26;33;02 - 00;27;04;06
Unknown
So like, is Ercot suffering or have an advantage over like the east side or the west side of the continental US? Ercot has because it's deregulated. It's it's unique compared to other regulated markets. Pennsylvania, West Virginia, other states that we work in, similar to Ohio, but different. So each each state is going to have its own implications, from, advantage.
00;27;04;09 - 00;27;25;09
Unknown
Think you can get a project started a lot faster, but there are other, requirements that Ercot is now adding to projects that you have to be able to curtail or put more power back on the grid. So these are kind of in flux. In each market, PJM is different than than Ercot. We need to attack this from all angles.
00;27;25;09 - 00;27;56;18
Unknown
We shouldn't be closing coal plants. We shouldn't be closing anything. We need to make any amount of power generation that we have available work better. We know how to do it. Just fix it. We can't be taking more power offline, even if it's dirty right now. Make it clean. We know how to make it clean. So we're we still have remnants of, you know, we we have to move to, not natural gas.
00;27;56;18 - 00;28;20;04
Unknown
And so we have these plants that are closed down. We can't afford to close down coal plants anymore. We closed down too many. We've taken our baseload, most reliable source off. Put them back. What can we put back online that you've already taken offline? That's where I think we should be spending more. More time. Like there seems to be some kind of energy mix that has to do with all the way down the line to these data centers.
00;28;20;04 - 00;28;51;10
Unknown
Like, obviously, natural gas is like our largest intake. Coal has absolutely plummeted and renewables are not exactly taking off the way we'd hope. So what is like the true mix we could do to have like the best outcome, whether involves uptick in coal, renewables, downtick in something maybe, I don't know, I think we use all the things we have to continue, pulling in the waste streams from renewable sources like landfills.
00;28;51;10 - 00;29;23;18
Unknown
Half of our landfills are still uncapped. So we need to go through the process and and complete that. And use that energy as a supplement to natural gas as a baseload natural gas can take us forward, but let's use those secondary energy generation types of what makes sense in those areas. If you're in Tennessee, that means turning on more hydropower like we I've come across projects where they they shut down the dams.
00;29;23;20 - 00;29;53;02
Unknown
We should be turning dams back on if they're there. You know why? Why would we just turn them off? So, we, we would look for baseload, natural gas and blend whatever other generation and, and anything else is supplemented with batteries. See, a lot a lot of industrial battery projects happening to to maybe make the, renewable, components make sense.
00;29;53;05 - 00;30;12;04
Unknown
So I think we need to, like, take a step back in. I need to understand, what's powering the data centers compared to, like, you know, a large store or homes. So, I mean, is it just like, power line goes the data center, and we're we're sharing it all, and that's that's causing it. Or is it more complex than that?
00;30;12;06 - 00;30;46;02
Unknown
I would look at it like these data centers that we're building are like sister cities that we're putting next to a city, and we're doubling the size of all of that power. So and we're just doing that in one small footprint. So one building is consumes the amount of power from, you know, a small power co-op, like all the homes, tens of thousands of homes to one building.
00;30;46;04 - 00;31;13;10
Unknown
So, it is specialized equipment that that's used just a lot of it coming, power equipment coming in one spot. Another thing I wanted to step back and understand is, like, data centers aren't new, right? So what were they? What were they? And before they are what they are now, like what was the use? Why is their power significantly lower where it wasn't a conversation point, you know, what did data centers used to look like?
00;31;13;12 - 00;31;47;29
Unknown
They still look a lot like, but they previously would look like you have racks of servers. You've probably seen pictures where just rows and rows of, server racks, all of that exists today. What we put inside of those racks, same amount of space 50 times the amount of power used. So the the equipment that's inside of those racks use a lot more power into it because they're doing different types of work.
00;31;48;01 - 00;32;03;13
Unknown
So that happen. So more power. The density of power at each rack level went from 10 to 100. I just talked to people last week about six and eight under.
00;32;03;15 - 00;32;26;14
Unknown
That's kind of an insane amount of power to be put into one spot. Well, that has to change. Now. You got to remove that heat. So it wasn't enough to just blow air through the floor, cold air and take that heat out with air. We have to start moving to liquid. It's the only way to remove heat fast enough, otherwise the whole thing will melt.
00;32;26;17 - 00;32;52;12
Unknown
So that that's maybe that's crazy because the technology gets better. It supposed to get more efficient too. Like my iPhone was two times bigger, the battery was 20 times worse. Now they're smaller, they're cooler, they charge better like and it's battery technology in general, but like most technology improves that way too. It gets faster, smaller and more efficient.
00;32;52;12 - 00;33;16;16
Unknown
But with this stuff, it's like the first two but not the latter. Well, yes and no. What we're asking you to do is a lot more. Yeah, we're getting more into, like, their dynamics and science. Like, did you think about your the chats you were having with ChatGPT two years ago or like tiny. Yeah. It's you're doing like play stuff now.
00;33;16;16 - 00;33;40;10
Unknown
We're having it put together a whole reports and does all of the information for you coding apps. Where did all that come from? We used to just do this little nibble. It just gave you a little bit and we were happy. We're excited now. We're not happy if it's not doing all of it for us. But that computation is done somewhere and we're just pushing that somewhere else.
00;33;40;12 - 00;34;02;26
Unknown
Yeah. That's crazy. I mean, I think I use some heavy work loads and in certain cases of how I can use like an alarm, but at the end of the day, like when it first came out, like when chat GPT three came out, it was already like huge. It was like one. It was like replaces the Google search engine that you're used to.
00;34;02;28 - 00;34;23;23
Unknown
You know, you could search something way more detailed and get the source and boom, there it is. And then you describe some other workflows, like people, especially people who do not touch stuff, cannot fathom what what is being utilized and how much it drains. And it kind of begs the question of like, is there a solution to kind of regulate and throttle?
00;34;23;23 - 00;34;43;00
Unknown
Right? You know, like we're making our internet better and faster. We come up with these huge stepping stones. Like switching to fiber was like a big breakthrough. Like, are we going to get a breakthrough to be more efficient, or are we going to have to have the government or whatever the private companies step in and actually lower throttle?
00;34;43;02 - 00;35;11;24
Unknown
Our usage, I don't know if it's going to come at the cost of the the usage. The breaking point is the, the power. These projects are going to find power somewhere and they're going to build it somewhere, whether or not that's, that's going to have a meaningful impact on what what we demand. And what I mean by that is we we can't move all the workloads further away from where people are now.
00;35;11;24 - 00;35;37;29
Unknown
We're just adding that traffic and latency to the network. So that doesn't make sense. We need a combination of some things run local and then some things run in the cloud. You know, where where the the heavy, heavy work is done. So some is oftentimes called inference that they're talking about having inference data centers. So what's actually serving up that new query you know, search that you do.
00;35;38;02 - 00;36;00;16
Unknown
What if that just hit your server in your other room kind of thing, or the server on your street, or they're actually talking about adding mini server farms on each cell phone tower so that if you're on your cell phone and you're issuing some query like that, first one can handle the response. That makes sense actually sounds more like something that could happen theoretically.
00;36;00;17 - 00;36;27;11
Unknown
Yeah. Well, it's going to have to I mean, we're we're going to want these things processed. Yeah. Okay. So I have no idea. This will kind of like correlate with you. But I did have a specific comment on, a piece of short form content. We posted and they made a comment about paying. This is like, you know, they work for a startup or a large company saying that they pay 13,000 a month for six AWS servers, saying that they could just run their own hardware.
00;36;27;11 - 00;36;50;08
Unknown
Is there like a version in the same debate and energy and, like maybe what Energy Acres is doing about like this, what sounds like an on prem debate or something like that? Well, it doesn't necessarily completely tied to Energy Acres like impacted, but I happy to talk about it. Yeah. If you if you can just if you can just wrap with that I would love to hear your take.
00;36;50;12 - 00;37;14;22
Unknown
Well I think of whether or not is process local or I got I guess like he's talking about like spending so much on cloud at AWS compared to, like, I'm gonna just do my own on prem hardware, right. Oh, absolutely. So, so there's two, two parts to that. One, there are ways to make anything much more token efficient.
00;37;14;24 - 00;37;38;13
Unknown
Most things that are out there just fire and forget and just let it go. And that's running up bills on things. There will be a move back from cloud. It's gotten far too expensive. Every incremental thing is expensive. Thousands of dollars to just keep it on. You're not even serving transactions. So that's that is going to start changing.
00;37;38;13 - 00;37;56;03
Unknown
But I think the thing that's going to move it is the data sovereignty. You're not going to want to send all your data to the cloud to process and get all the value that you need it to get answers here. Why am I paying for the bandwidth to go up like one direction I have to pay for? What do I want to do that?
00;37;56;03 - 00;38;29;03
Unknown
Why wouldn't I just run it all here? I keep my real intelligence. My value of my company is here, inside of my walls. I think companies are going to start moving that direction, because they're going to want to use open source models and use them on prem. So build more machinery in-house so you can do all that testing and you're really only paying for power, whereas you pay the tax on all those services for your bandwidth, for your storage, for every step you pay a tax in the cloud.
00;38;29;05 - 00;38;45;15
Unknown
I could just have the one time CapEx here. Yeah. I mean, it's hard to understand that as like a consumer who just has like a Dropbox and a Google Drive. But, I mean, where are you going to get the the hardware for your own servers when the data centers are ramping up the prices? It's like a whole paradox.
00;38;45;18 - 00;39;06;16
Unknown
It's different hardware. Yeah, right. You have nothing to worry about. Okay. Say, that's how lost in translation me and a lot of other people. Well, there's actually, there was a rumor that Apple was running out of Mac minis because Mac mini is the craze because everyone was trying to run OpenCL for Mac minis. I mean, you can run it on anything, so but Mac mini is the cheapest, you know, it's just the computer.
00;39;06;16 - 00;39;28;02
Unknown
You put it in, you get it working, and then that's your secondary machine. I think that's what the consumers are going to be doing. You're all going to have recycle your old machine, put it there, load it up and then you can run and test things local. It's a lot cheaper. Yeah. No I actually get that one because people aren't used to hearing an Apple product be this the cheaper.
00;39;28;02 - 00;39;51;05
Unknown
So yeah, yeah, the Mac mini is just like this miracle device that they're some reason not overcharging for once. And, yeah, it's pretty funny. Another question we had was someone claimed, I guess they heard, like, all the US data centers combined use less water than a single power plant. That's absolutely not true. Right. What what is your thoughts on the water stereotypes?
00;39;51;07 - 00;40;18;05
Unknown
The things that are happening are scary. The good, the bad, the ugly. Data centers are just lazy and wasteful. They're doing it the way they've always done it and cooled the way they've always done it. Spend the extra money, upgrade your cooling. And don't be so wasteful. We we largely for every megawatt in a data center, it takes another half a megawatt to cool it.
00;40;18;07 - 00;40;42;02
Unknown
It's just not good enough. You know, we if if we are cooling you like a radiator on your car, well, that cools more efficiently than air. So let's let's do that. And data centers are having to because cities aren't giving them the water and rightfully so. I mean, there's there's cities that certainly shouldn't have them, for so many reasons.
00;40;42;02 - 00;41;03;07
Unknown
The, the actual water that's not there, like in Nevada or in the whole countries of Texas, to the poorer parts of the country that are being what seems to be like taken advantage of. Right. Is is there any kind of like, comparisons with that in Ohio? I was this large, rural, space where I hear a lot of data centers being built and targeted.
00;41;03;10 - 00;41;29;12
Unknown
These data centers are big enough now that they will consume all available resources that are left in any town that they're going in. If they're going into a town of population of 50,000 or 100,000 or less, they're taking the rest of it. Whatever you have available and there will be have to be upgrades. There's just like these are entire cities that we're building right next to a city.
00;41;29;12 - 00;41;54;07
Unknown
It's just this is too many resources in one spot. To to not have major upgrades needed. It's going to be a wild few years ahead. This is a wild next decade. Like, it's everything is just going to keep moving quicker and faster. Sick man. All right, well, so Energy Acres plays a part of this, all right?
00;41;54;07 - 00;42;20;26
Unknown
Yeah. There's something you're doing with the, greenhouse is to kind of do a better solution that maybe, like the lazy data centers aren't a fan of. Or they should adopt. Yeah, we we want, we we bring in and offer as a product and a partner on a project, a data center. Speed, speed to power, speed to your, your project.
00;42;20;28 - 00;42;47;20
Unknown
Less roadblocks because we have the community benefit baked in like it's part of our company's mission and business model is to make the energy count twice. And so data center, you do your thing, you know, do it well. We need you to make some changes to your design, and it fits in like this and that. We can rinse and repeat because we haven't met one city.
00;42;47;20 - 00;43;13;11
Unknown
One one person has said, this is a bad idea. I don't I don't want I don't want that here. You know, once they put okay data center and it's not taking all the resources and all that even could be extra power for us and food. Okay. What else is needed? You know, it's kind of the the conversation is, takes on a, a different form at that point.
00;43;13;13 - 00;43;31;01
Unknown
Yeah. No, you get into a lot of detail about it with Todd and, and another video with us, but can you kind of. I need to, like, visualize, like what y'all are adding. Right. And, like, you know, this goes to this, this comes out of this, like, what is like the, the matrix of this process.
00;43;31;01 - 00;43;56;06
Unknown
You have. So picture in your mind, you need, a big power plant right in the center of several hundred acres. You put that power plant there on one side, you're going to have a data center, campus or multiple buildings that you build out over time. On the other side, you're going to have, at least 40 acres of greenhouse space that you will continue building over time.
00;43;56;06 - 00;44;22;19
Unknown
There will also be cold storage underneath the ground. What connects all of that together is a bunch of pipes that move fluid around hot and cold fluid and storage tanks. It it would look kind of like, you know, big industrial sites with storage containers and pipes and, you know, all connected to serve that bigger footprint. So big in industrial footprint.
00;44;22;19 - 00;44;44;28
Unknown
But what the magic is, what's under the ground and attached to the power plant, because attached to the power plant is extra equipment to capture the CO2, to capture store the waste energy. How you move that around to treating the water on site? Everything is easier to do when you're using that weight, that waste energy. That's right.
00;44;44;28 - 00;45;03;18
Unknown
Central to the whole project. So big power plant, greenhouse on one side, data center campus on the other. And I'm assuming you have a bunch of charts and pictures like this on LinkedIn and on your website. Yeah, I, I create an insane amount of content. So, yeah, if if it's not there, I can build it.
00;45;03;23 - 00;45;23;10
Unknown
Yeah, well, let's wrap it up with some future speak. Right. I know it's hard. You mentioned. I don't think you want a detail about it. About SMR, small modular reactors. We're talking many nuclear power plants, right? Yeah. How how can, we as people adopt that? And what are you actually have your eye on, for your own company?
00;45;23;10 - 00;45;52;18
Unknown
Yeah, we so we put together a menu of energy options on every one of our projects. And some of those projects are in areas that we deem, you know, potential, viable future SMR sites. So it's got to be largely in a remote area. It's got to be in an area that, you know, the the community would be favorable to changing the the regulation to allow a nuclear power plant.
00;45;52;20 - 00;46;38;27
Unknown
What what we've seen is that we're still getting the first machines built. Built manually. We don't have the factory that's pumping out any of these machines. It took us a decade for shale to really hit its groove. Killed oil or gas price, of course. But we got we got really good at it. It's going to take that long from for smrs to go from the trial where they're at right now to, okay, we can pump these things out and get 200MW or 500MW at a site because it's they're they're still making the parts right now, like testing out the designs.
00;46;39;00 - 00;47;01;11
Unknown
It is the future, but it's a decade out. You already know how much all that infrastructure and stuff is. But that's the goal of assemblers. They're smaller, they're faster, cheaper relatively. Right? Yeah. They're not going to take a decade in the big nuke plants that you have. They're also a safer design. This design is and it's it's as safe as we possibly can get in terms of energy production.
00;47;01;16 - 00;47;26;04
Unknown
And let's think even more further. I hear I've been hearing about data centers and space. Yeah, I've been hearing that too. Is good is, space is getting things in to space. That big rack that I was telling you about and what Jensen is building, and they put that whole thing together. You know how much that weighs?
00;47;26;07 - 00;47;55;14
Unknown
A couple tons to lift it up. And this one, it. Yeah, yeah. Pretty expensive getting things into space. So, I think that's more like maybe you're sending the silicon in, and when we have robots up there to kind of build it, put it together. Oh my God. But we don't build those machines that build the machines. And as good as Musk and you know, Tesla is, it still took them a decade to start getting their machine built to build the machines.
00;47;55;16 - 00;48;16;00
Unknown
You're going to do that in space where there are no people working? I don't know, it's going to take a little while. It's not man, it's not a thing idea. That must be why they're like trying to build on the moon. Because you can lift off the moon. Yeah, you can just, like, jump, essentially. Right? Yeah. So Earth man, they're going to do some crazy shit.
00;48;16;00 - 00;48;38;19
Unknown
I mean, as crazy as Elon is, what he's done with Starlink and I mean just Tesla, the battery technology in general is pretty like like textbook generations. Large moment. Right? Is he really going to get another one with this data center idea or someone else? Like they're like, that'd be insane. Well, in the future it will go there.
00;48;38;19 - 00;49;08;15
Unknown
But is that where our base load is going to be? I just it's really expensive to get things in space and keep them there. And I guess, you know, we still have quantum computing to look out to and, whatever other that require an entirely new internet backbone to supply that and rebuild the entire grid and. Yep. And render blockchain, you know, useless and planetary governments discover aliens.
00;49;08;15 - 00;49;23;05
Unknown
Yeah. That's all all coming up in the next, next episode. Yeah. All right. Any final thoughts? Any shout outs to, Energy Acres, Ohio? Oh yeah. All right. Well, thanks for coming on.
