AI-powered hubs use more electricity than entire cities!
The power needs of artificial intelligence and cloud computing are growing so much that individual data center campuses could soon use more electricity than some cities and even entire US states, according to the companies developing the devices.
The electricity consumption of data centers has exploded along with their increasingly critical role in the economy in the last 10 years, housing servers that power the applications that businesses and consumers rely on for everyday tasks.
Now, with the advent of artificial intelligence, data centers are growing so much that finding enough power to run them and enough land to house them will become increasingly difficult, developers say. The facilities can increasingly require a gigawatt or more of a billion watts of power, or about twice the Pittsburgh area's residential electricity consumption last year.
Renewable energy alone will not be enough to meet their energy needs. Natural gas will have to play a role, developers say, which will slow progress toward meeting carbon dioxide emissions targets.
The electric grid serving Virginia is facing serious reliability problems. Energy demand is expected to increase, while supply is falling due to the retirement of some coal and natural gas power plants.
Developers favor carbon-free renewable energy, but they also see solar and wind alone as unable to meet current demand due to their reliance on changing weather conditions.
Major technology companies are some of the biggest buyers of renewable energy in the US, but they are increasingly turning to nuclear in search of more reliable sources of electricity.
Microsoft is supporting the restart of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania through a power purchase agreement. Amazon and Alphabet's Google are investing in small nuclear reactors.
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