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To: SeekAndFind
What the media isn't talking about is why the massive amount of power are being required. It actually isn't directly consumed much by the servers. The power load comes from the massive amount of cooling equipment required to keep both the servers and buildings they are housed in cooled to operational specifications.

The A/C units use massive A/C systems which cool water, which is pumped to air handling units, which distribute the air supply.

To give you some idea a 300 Ton capacity chiller would require about 2000 amps at 460 volts on start up draw then taper off within seconds to say 300 amps operational load. The actual heat load of a server farm I have no idea but I do know that companies like BIT COIN require so much A/C capacity that the noise alone generated by the cooling towers outside make them an unwanted neighbor for about a mile.

Over time electronics have changed. My ship an aircraft carrier had 3-150 Ton units, 6-200 ton units, and 1-350 ton unit. This was in 1980 That meant 2000 tons cooling capacity with a total power load of roughly way 0ver 2000 amps total combined power load at 460 volts. Today's carrier like the FORD have 20,000 capacity.

Taking this further hospitals also for obvious reasons have a very high load demand for cooling. This is for the diagnostics such as MRI, CT, etc. Commercial A/C for large buildings is one of the power grids biggest consumers. Thus the Solar, Wind, renewables, are of absolutely no benefit.

11 posted on 09/20/2024 10:28:21 PM PDT by cva66snipe
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To: cva66snipe

Since most of the energy is needed for cooling it makes the most sense to build your data center in a cold place. Like Alaska or even Antarctic. You merely pump cold ocean water into the heat exchangers. All that warm water created would be a draw for all sorts of life.


13 posted on 09/20/2024 11:06:36 PM PDT by Nateman (Democrats did not strive for fraud friendly voting merely to continue honest elections.)
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To: cva66snipe

Standard modern graphics card (RTX 4090) pulls ~450W. That’s ~3.75A at 120V max or 3A at 80% capacity. A small cluster of these (3x) would be 9A at 80% capacity.

Enterprise computing platforms use NVIDIA A100 chips in some cases. These are 2 rack unit (RU) servers with 2x A100 chips at 300W max power draw rating per chip (~480W or 4A at 80%). A standard server rack is 48U with some room for networking equipment, so assume 18 servers per rack (72A at 120VAC or 8.64 kW). Many data centers use a hot aisle/cold aisle pod model where each pod has 10 racks with 2 central dedicated racks for core networking or 8 racks total (69.12 kW). Each aisle has 2 pods cooled (138.24 kW), and there are likely anywhere from 500-1000 pods per floor in a datacenter, depending on total area (69.12 MW at 500 pods). Assume 3 floors per datacenter and you’re at 207.36 MW.

One reactor at TMI puts out ~825 MW, so factor in HVAC, electrical, plus all of the ancillary things in a datacenter (storage, backup hardware, networking equipment, they’re likely close to 500 MW total draw. Plenty of room for error in my calculations.


23 posted on 09/21/2024 4:04:30 AM PDT by rarestia (“A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one.” -Hamilton)
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