Dragging up again

You’re so based for standing up for the clickbait rag that is modern vice. Even if you have the reading comprehension of a grade schooler.

Ok and you put more thought into the framing of this story than the author of the vice post(I will not call that an article) did. If you think there isn’t an anti-datacenter circlejerk and this wasn’t bait for it I don’t know what to tell you. High value cargo theft did not start because of datacenters, but you definitely only heard about this one because of the huge appetite for anti-datacenter news.

That’s what I mean by circlejerk. Things that are not actually particularly exceptional are being treated like major news stories because people crave confirmation bias and schadenfreude. This vice post is one of the most transparent examples of the outrage economy that I’ve seen in a while.

Do you think pretending that thieves doing what they have always done is now epic and based is somehow hurting AI companies?

Clickbait circlejerk slop. Every construction site is a target for thieves. This is just low effort clickbait made to pander to the anti-datacenter circlejerk, you could at least have linked instead to the business insider article this is ripping off.

I’m pretty definitely sure the photo is AI too, it’s certainly not the Muttsee dam.

‘confirms the energy is there’ buddy it’s the sun, we already know it’s there. It doesn’t make sense to install capacity at 12 euros per watt when you can install capacity for 1 euro per watt or whatever the numbers actually are. I would be shocked if transmission losses are anywhere even close to cost efficiency losses.

The swiss do this sort of thing because they have the money to burn and place a high emphasis on aesthetics. They probably think this is less of an eyesore than ground mount so that makes it worth it for them.

I could have sworn I looked this up recently, I might have been thinking of Austria.

*oh that figure includes combustion heating, I think I saw their domestic electricity production mix.

Switzerland is one of the only countries where it makes any sense to do this kind of nonsense because they’re already almost completely on renewable power. I shudder to think of how high the installation cost per watt is when you need rope access teams drilling into concrete. Some IRATA certified electrician probably bought a vacation home with the money from just this project.

‘wow the panels are 50% more efficient during winter, and it only cost 1000% more to install compared to a conventional rooftop’

*Ok I checked, it cost about 3.6 CHF per nameplate watt. Roughly double residential rooftop solar in Switzerland, which itself is again about double what a ground mount array costs. So still bad, not nearly as bad as I thought. This also is only the original install cost. Apparently they’ve had to do significant repairs, including replacing 270 panels, because of snow and ice damage. From the bit of extra research I did on this I think the primary purpose of this install was to ease the path to getting more alpine solar installation approved. Because this definitely isn’t economically viable and I don’t think they expected it to be. But there is potential for economically viable alpine solar farms if they can get approval for development.

**By the way this article and the image for it are AI slop, the actual install is slightly less absurd than the article makes it look.