Data Center Sound Requirements Have Giant Loophole

San Angelo City Council will entertain design recommendations for data centers in this evening's meeting.  Council members are likely attending the presentation by SkyBox Data Centers at a Chamber of Commerce event today.  

The U.S. Department of Energy recently enacted such an emergency for backup power generators: 

Currently, there are tens of gigawatts of readily available backup generation that have remained largely untapped until now. Deployment of backup generation resources (whether auxiliary, standby, directly-connected, battery storage or other, and whether synchronized or not to the bulk power system) at data centers (including but not limited to hyperscaler facilities), and at other large load industrial and commercial customer sites, can prevent avoidable blackouts, thereby saving lives and reducing costs to the American people. The employment of this backup generation is expected to reduce stress on the grid. 

This will permit orderly, safe, and secure operations during Winter Storm Fern. Consistent with my letter issued on January 22, 2026, ERCOT requested today that DOE issue an order pursuant to FPA section 202(c) to allow the deployment of backup generation during emergency conditions.

By overtaxing the Texas energy grid, data centers can fire up their generators and sell power back through ERCOT.  

Abilene's giant AI facility started as a Bitcoin mining energy arbitrage play on stranded cheap renewable power.  It happened to be in the right place at the right time to get scooped up into Trump II's White House AI initiative "Stargate."   

Anyone care to hear what 160 emergency generators sound like when they are all fired up?  Anyone else want to be downwind of their emissions?  

We used to smell the rendering plant when the wind blew from the northeast.  What will an energy emergency smell like in San Angelo's future?

TechGods bring a different kind of rendering which includes massive amounts of garbage from the internet.  I expect this next round to be no different than their contributions to date.