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Michael's avatar

The full buildout, primary plus secondary, is 1.3 gigawatts. That’s twice the power used by Tucson, Marana, Oro Valley, Vail, Samaritan, and Green Valley combined. TEP’s Irvington plant has a capacity of about 500 megawatts. Also consider that we’re talking about nearly tripling the amount of ozone pollution.

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Charlie Grantham (Tucson)'s avatar

Hat tip to Joe and the crew on your Project Blue reporting. It's nice to see some data, but I remain highly skeptical. A few questions:

1) Where are the ROI calculations for the City of Tucson? There's a cost to deploying these assets (energy and water) here instead of other potential uses

2) Has anyone checked with the Electric Power Research Institute or the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission about 'compute' demand projections?

3) Why the secrecy? Competitive advantage? Trade secret protection?

Sorry, I smell a rat here. This would never pass muster in a CAPEX committee meeting.

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Dave Gallagher's avatar

Check out this New York Times article, Meta Built a Data Center Next Door. The Neighbors' Water taps Went Dry.

Also, check out Karen Hao's book, Empire of AI.

When new businesses express an interest in coming to the Old Pueblo, we usually know what that business does: Why and who benefits. We should be more curious about these so-called data centers.

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Mike Humphrey's avatar

I’m trying to understand the water math for Project Blue. One hyperscale data center uses 459 acre feet of water. The proposal calls for up to 30 centers being built. 30 x 459 =13,770 acre feet. The city claims that only 1900 acre feet are needed. Please explain. Thanks.

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Wyatt Kanyer's avatar

Yes, to other commenters’ points, if Project Blue’s greatest asset is economic growth for our community, where are those projections? This is Tucson, where the community is dialed in, and Arizona, where people don’t take too kindly to lack of transparency. Even though Tucson (like many communities in its shoes) needs an economic boost, this project could have had a much better chance of success if the developer were open from the beginning and focused on how it plans to bring jobs and economic development to places like west and south Tucson.

What’s more, we have at least three (maybe four) “no” votes on annexation already (members Dahl, Cunningham, Lee, and likely Santa Cruz) plus two outgoing temporary councimembers who will likely vote with constituents in mind (Pérez and Uhlich), I see a 6-0 vote against annexation. I will be interested to see if the developer comes back with a more comprehensive plan or if they will simply walk.

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Dave Gallagher's avatar

I hope that they walk. I'm confident that there are desert friendly businesses that would consider doing business in the Old Pueblo. We should not lose the character of Tucson and all of Pima County. We are not Phoenix and there is a reason why Phoenix is sinking significantly while Tucson is not.

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Wyatt Kanyer's avatar

I’m with you, Dave!

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Patrick Cavanaugh's avatar

Excellent reporting on PB. Need more questions answered.

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Carolyn's avatar

Dying to know who’s behind Project Blue.

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