Data Centers

DRAM Spot Price

Looks like the price for computer memory chips has gone up by a factor of ten in the last year. Some people are betting heavily that the Artificial Intelligence / Data Center boom is somehow going to pay off big time.

Evergreen Substation and Constable BESS

For a long time I've been wondering about the confluence of high voltage power lines near Highway 26 and Cornelius Pass Road in Hillsboro. I kind of assumed it was because of Intel's Ronler Acres mega-fab near there. Finally asked Google for map and it turned me on to Open Infrastructure Map, and man-oh-man, it is glorious. Everything I ever wanted in a map. Well, except for railroads, but we have the OpenRailway Map for that.

Anyway, looking at the Open Infrastructure Map I see there is substation devoted to Ronler Acres, but it is kind of small, so that's not what all these power lines are for. But then a short distance away I find the Evergreen Substation (shown on the above map), and it is right in the middle of all the big box warehouse like buildings being built just north of Evergreen Road. I suspect some, if not all, are data centers.

Right next door to the Evergreen Substation is Constable BESS. And what the heck is Constable BESS? It's a 75 megawatt battery. Somebody really wanted dependable power in this area. Decision to construct the battery was made back in 2021, so somebody was planning for this explosion of data centers several years before it got started. I'm pretty sure that three years ago all that land north of Evergreen was empty farmland. 2023 was the year Constable BESS came online. Huh.