My city's power company itself has multiple peaking power generators in shipping containers, that it runs because there's isn't enough supply.

Compared to full-size natural gas powerplants they're extremely awful, but they're a necessity when we otherwise wouldn't have reliable power. If it wasn't for NINBYism, we'd have plenty of hydro and nuclear power to meet all of our needs, but with NINBYism the only option is to build smaller, which is also dirtier and less efficient, but avoids the NIMBY blockades.

> If it wasn't for NINBYism,

Hey now, give the environmentalists some credit too.

Even if the NIMBYs evaporated overnight these projects would still be hobbled by all manner of "you're gonna need an engineered stormwater solution" and "gonna need an impact study" type crap wherein firms and trades that manage to market what they do as being good for the environment (but at what cost?) are empowered sometimes by law, but more often by bureaucratic policy to leech large sums out of money at every step of the process.

At least in California, through a regulation called CEQA, NIMBYism is usually enacted through extreme selective enforcement of engineering and environment impact requirements.

They usually only apply to projects over a certain size, hence the shift to smaller projects to avoid NIMBYism.

Which city is this? I see the two most easy to build renewables options have been suspiciously left out.

Hydro is the best renewable at meeting demand peaks. Concentrated solar with molten salt storage could theoretically be just as good, but it isn't cost effective and the only large one, in Ivanpah California, is shutting down.

Nuclear is great at base power, but cannot quickly react to changes in demand. Wind and photovoltaic solar give power whenever it's available, but without storage, they also can't help with peak demands.

Ideally these engines should be deployed near the NIMBY’s houses so that they can appreciate the symphony and aroma they produce. If it’s a problem, offer them the possibility to bid a certain amount (either in terms of current money or future “property value”) to replace them with quieter, more efficient alternatives if the music/fragrance isn’t up to their taste.

What is NINBYism?

Not In Neumann's Back Yard

Kinda funny behaviour from the electric cars will save us guy.

I mean it's the "repeatedly confirmed to be egoistic to a point where they don't care if their neglect kills people guy".

Classic whataboutism, but why single out him when every new datacenter is same?

Modern aero derivative power turbines are capable of operating at below 15 ppm NOx when properly fitted for use. It's not as if they aren't making any attempt at all with regard to emissions. They've been working on this stuff since the 90s. They're on 2nd and 3rd generation combustor technology now.

That said, a parking lot full of these things could eventually crank up the ambient NOx levels. The real problem is low stack height. The exhaust being close to the ground creates a hot spot that would have otherwise dispersed into a much larger volume of air. One generator running by itself is probably not an issue in any arrangement. 20 is a medium sized power plant.

it is

the reason it sells it that some non small part of the investor marked expects there is a "explosion" in compute needs, cause by AI adoption

which will lead to an explosion of electrical need

except there is limited world wide production capacity for gas power plants and other power plants, and some (e.g. nuclear) are very slow to build

and Trump put a lot of extra artificial hurdles for expanding anything "renewable"

so basically if that happen we most likely will have

- exploding electrical bills, and if no intervention is done for private homes, too.

- air pollution (and other environmental pollution) which doesn't just give people asthma implicitly will kill them (like them ding years earlier, but also potentially through damage from asthma attacks etc.)[1]

- price explosion of any electric components which share production lines with GPU servers (which isn't just GPUs, but also RAM, CPUs, etc.), the predicted price increase of RAM by ~30% is partially due to people anticipating this and already buying capacities :/

Naturally there needs to be a sinner to put the blame one so expect claims that electric price increases are fully at fault of Wind Farms and similar :/

Oh also if the AI bubble goes pop it sadly will not just be all fine, because we now have a double bubble of the core AI bubble and the "speculative new data center investment" bubble. The first will majorly hit the top of SAP100 and with it a lot of founds and similar which try to be "stable"/"reliable" etc. The other is more fulled by private equity and it's (for me) very unclear what is linked to it. One way or another things look pretty bad.

[1]: If anyone is wondering if there will be interventions from the state weather it's the OP politico article or long term promulgated and reported issues with fracking causing mutated fishes and major increases in cancer down stream, or the long history with toxic wast dumping in the US the answer is, most likely, no. And that sadly isn't even Trump specific.