Is Pax Silica bad for the Philippines?

Nation building via learning and being the best in business  

Everybody is agog over the Pax Silica project 1,600 hectares in Tarlac City for tech hub presumably for data center locators.   Oppositors  have two issues:   that the data center will need too much water for cooling and it will further disrupt the power situation in Luzon grid, the supply situation all ready thin.

It is to be noted that the players in the AI supply system are numerous:

1.  Power gen -  turbines, cables, transmission tower, gen set, nuclear power, switch gears, nuclear power, bus...

2.  Cooling system -  aircon, water cooling for the chips

The business outside of high tech could be much much bigger than data center itself.    Data center should be better be located at the bottom of lakes or oceans which we have plenty.

Really, we could be missing out in case we just go along with the bandwagon thinking that Data center per se is bad    There are cooling system that are not dependent on fresh water  (How about salt water, the processors do not drink water -  its only for cooling, and there are various ways to cool the computers.   Power gens can be provided by their own locators)

  

By  Leo Cui

Difficulties with renewable energy

Looking forward to the future of business

All is not sweet ang nice for renewable energy.  Some were false and based on worng assuption

1.  Solar panels

     1.  Panels degrade over time by as much as 3% per year

     2.  Batteries need replacment every three years lengthening ROI period

     3.  The inverters can catch fire

     4.  They only work during daytime, and at most only 20% efficient

     5.  Problem of storage

     6. Technology is changing.  There are more efficient panels like perosviite

     7.  Hard to fit into the grid because they generate square waves not sine waves

     8.  The solar panel junk

2.  Wind turbine

     1.  Can be dead without wind 

     2  Wear out easily 

     3.  Is noisy

     4.  Kills birds

3. EV vehicles

    1. Turns out to require maintenance 2x the ICE engines

    2  Catches fires

    3  Charging infrastructures

    4.  Range anxiety by motoriests

    5   Battery disposal nightmare

    6  Charging requres grid pwoer which is till dirty

    7.  Battery raw materials extraction has defects like child labor, use of fossil fuel machinery for extraction.  

There