After a year of concerted hand-wringing about the growing energy needs of data centers, a report that dropped just before the holidays proposed a solution that had been strangely absent from the discussion.

AI companies have seemingly grasped for every imaginable source of clean energy to quench their thirst for power, including pricey, left-field ideas like restarting shuttered nuclear plants. Some are foregoing climate concerns altogether and ordering up off-grid natural gas turbines. In a pithily named new analysis — “Fast, scalable, clean, and cheap enough” — the report’s authors make a compelling case for an alternative: off-grid solar microgrids…

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https://heatmap.news/technology/data-center-solar-microgrids