Appendix D. Energy & Plant Architecture
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Jason St George. "Appendix D. Energy & Plant Architecture" in Next‑Gen Store of Value: Privacy, Proofs, Compute. Version v1.0. /v/1.0/read/appendix/d-energy-plant/ Appendix D: Energy & Plant Architecture
Plant architecture for verifiable work
Objective: deliver verifiable, dispatchable, and composable power to proving and inference clusters so that proof units and verified FLOPs remain cheap to check and neutral to route.
Electrical topology (MV → LV):
- Medium-voltage interconnect with dual utility feeds where available; 2N or N+1 step-down to rack power.
- UPS/BESS for ride-through and proof-preserving shutdowns.
- Power-quality SLOs (voltage/frequency/THD) bound worst-case verifier latency inflation.
Thermal topology:
- Air to liquid (direct-to-chip/immersion) as default for high-density provers.
- Heat-reuse loops to district heating, greenhouses, or absorption chillers to improve ERE.
- Publish PUE and ERE: if we monetize heat, ERE < 1.0 is both possible and economically material.
Network & provenance:
- Redundant backhaul with clock discipline (PTP/Stratum) so receipts carry tight timing jitter bounds.
- Facility attestation path: meters and controllers sign energy/thermal telemetry.
Control plane:
- Workload-aware orchestration couples grid signals → job scheduler.
- Interruptible Bronze proofs pause first; Gold proofs ride through with BESS and on-site firming.
Energy procurement & grid posture:
- Portfolio, not a point bet: long-dated PPAs, nodal index exposure, behind-the-meter firming, and BESS.
- Co-location with stranded or curtailed energy (hydro spill, wind/solar curtailment, flare-gas).
- Demand response as a feature: treat prover/inference farms as dispatchable loads.
- Carbon & provenance: bind certificates into FER format so “kgCO₂e per proof” is auditable.
SLA tiers that map power quality to receipts:
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Bronze (interruptible): Shed priority 1. Eligible for demand-response; refunds/penalties via SLA escrow if p95 VerifyPrice breached. Typical use: PoL audits, non-urgent prover workloads.
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Silver (curtailable with notice): Shed priority 2 with N+1 firming; curtailment windows posted ahead of time. Typical use: batch MatMul-PoUW, rollup proving backlogs.
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Gold (firm): 2N electrical path or N+1 + BESS ride-through; zero curtailment except force majeure. Typical use: settlement-critical proofs, receipt ledger finalization.
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