Build 14 · Open
What one AI campus pays for its power, and how much of its cost that is
Price a year of power for a 100 MW datacenter in PJM: the energy bill from a real day-ahead price series, the capacity bill from the latest Base Residual Auction clearing price, then set power against the GPU cost read from one neocloud filing.
Done when
A state a stranger could checkA model a stranger can rerun: every input sourced to a primary document with its date, the annual energy and capacity charges shown separately in $ and $/MWh, power as a share of the campus’s annual cost beside the filing’s GPU depreciation, and what a 10% move in each input does to that share.
Why it is harder — The first build whose subject is a market rather than a machine. The numbers come from auctions, tariffs and contracts, not a spec sheet, and the cheap input (power) turns out to be the one that decides whether the campus exists.
What it reads
Just enough to unblock the next step- Renewables in Electricity Markets M1 · M2 · M3How the energy price clears and why it moves hour to hour. Ancillary services and the renewables modules wait.
- US power market design and datacenter load R1 · R2 · R5The capacity auction for the second charge, the queue for why the campus waits, the large-load tariff for who pays. Co-location and spark spreads wait for the next build that needs them.
- How compute pays for itself — the filings F1The CoreWeave 10-K only, for one real GPU depreciation and contract line to set the power bill against.
What it ships
- BuildThe campus power model, rerunnable from its sources
- NotebookWhat an AI campus pays for power, and why the small line decides the build
- BottleEnergy, capacity and tariff charges, spaced
Teach it back
If it cannot be explained plainly, it was not learned- 1Explain itExplain what you built to a friend who has never seen it. Plain words, no jargon, five sentences at most.
- 2Predicted vs realWhat you expected to happen, what actually happened, and why the two differ.
- 3Where it breaksThe question about it you still cannot answer, and the point where your explanation stops working.
- 4KeepThe one number, rule or picture worth keeping. It becomes a bottle and gets re-tested.
No notes on this build yet.
A note is a Learning Log entry with the tag study-campus-power-bill. It is written in Connor's words, filed as a draft, and appears here once it is published from the admin queue. One note can carry several build tags.