{"id":6610,"date":"2024-09-25T11:09:43","date_gmt":"2024-09-25T11:09:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mpelembe.net\/?p=6610"},"modified":"2024-09-25T11:09:43","modified_gmt":"2024-09-25T11:09:43","slug":"ai-supercharges-data-center-energy-use-straining-the-grid-and-slowing-sustainability-efforts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mpelembe.net\/index.php\/ai-supercharges-data-center-energy-use-straining-the-grid-and-slowing-sustainability-efforts\/","title":{"rendered":"AI supercharges data center energy use \u2013 straining the grid and slowing sustainability efforts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ayse Coskun<\/a>, Boston University<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

The artificial intelligence boom has had such a profound effect on big tech companies that their energy consumption, and with it their carbon emissions, have surged<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The spectacular success of large language models such as ChatGPT has helped fuel this growth in energy demand. At 2.9 watt-hours per ChatGPT request, AI queries require about 10 times the electricity of traditional Google queries<\/a>, according to the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit research firm. Emerging AI capabilities such as audio and video generation are likely to add to this energy demand.<\/p>\n

The energy needs of AI are shifting the calculus of energy companies. They\u2019re now exploring previously untenable options, such as restarting a nuclear reactor<\/a> at the Three Mile Island power plant, site of the infamous disaster<\/a> in 1979, that has been dormant since 2019.<\/p>\n

Data centers have had continuous growth for decades, but the magnitude of growth in the still-young era of large language models has been exceptional. AI requires a lot more computational and data storage resources<\/a> than the pre-AI rate of data center growth could provide. <\/p>\n

AI and the grid<\/h2>\n

Thanks to AI, the electrical grid \u2013 in many places already near its capacity or prone to stability challenges<\/a> \u2013 is experiencing more pressure than before. There is also a substantial lag between computing growth and grid growth. Data centers take one to two years to build, while adding new power to the grid requires over four years<\/a>. <\/p>\n

As a recent report from the Electric Power Research Institute lays out, just 15 states contain 80% of the data centers in the U.S.<\/a>. Some states \u2013 such as Virginia, home to Data Center Alley<\/a> \u2013 astonishingly have over 25% of their electricity consumed by data centers. There are similar trends of clustered data center growth in other parts of the world. For example, Ireland has become a data center nation<\/a>. <\/p>\n

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