Posted on 10/04/2024 3:45:57 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Datacenters coming online in the next 15 months will need to supply at least some of their own power
Updated As the saying goes, everything is bigger in Texas, but as datacenter footprints explode amid the AI boom, regulators fear even the Lone Star state's utilities won't be able to keep up for much longer.
The Texas' Public Utility Commission is now warning datacenter operators looking to set up shop in the US state within the next 12 to 15 months that they won't be able to rely entirely on the local grid and will have to supply at least some of their own power. As some of you will know, Texas has at times suffered blackouts from demand overload, and outages sparked by storms damaging infrastructure.
"We can't afford to lose any of our resources off the system at this point, especially given those load-growth projections," Thomas Gleeson, who chairs the commission, told Blomberg during the Gulf Coast Power Association conference in Austin this week.
Chief among Gleeson's concerns is datacenters setting up shop near existing power plants and buying up the supply of electricity, making it harder for the grid to keep the lights on for everyone else. Instead, Gleeson wants to see datacenter operators arranging and supporting their own generation facilities before putting strain on existing infrastructure.
Gleeson's comments come as power becomes a chief concern among datacenter operators looking to expand AI compute infrastructure to new regions and larger clusters. Some of the AI-crunching clusters under development now exceed 125,000 GPUs and have power budgets measured in hundreds of megawatts.
Last month, Oracle supremo Larry Ellison revealed his database giant's largest datacenter development was rated for 800 megawatts of capacity, and said next-gen facilities would consume more than a gigawatt.
Sourcing power for these sites has become a prime concern for datacenter operators, and according to a recent CBRE report is already resulting in delays to datacenter builds.
To ensure their bit-barn projects don't run out of juice, some operators are cozying up to operating and even defunct nuclear power plants. This northern spring, Amazon paid $650 million for Talen Energy's Cumulus datacenter located directly adjacent to the 2.5 gigawatt Susquehanna nuclear power plant. Under the deal, Amazon will have access to up to 960 megawatts of power.
Similarly, Microsoft just signed a 20-year power purchase agreement with Constellation Energy to bring the 837 megawatt Three Mile Island Unit 1 nuclear plant back online following its retirement in 2019. Google CEO Sundar Pichai recently told Nikkei Asia that the search giant is also weighing the nuclear option.
However, bringing retired nuclear plants back online isn't always as easy as it sounds. As The Register recently reported, many older facilities will require extensive repairs and modernization before they're ready to start turning steam into electricity again.
Some operators hope to bypass the problems associated with legacy reactor designs by opting for small modular reactor designs from the likes of NuScale, Oklo, and others. During Oracle's Q1 earnings call last month, Ellison said the IT goliath had already secured building permits for a trio of SMRs.
But while SMRs have promise, none are operating.
NuScale, which is one of the first SMR vendors to get approval from US authorities to build the small reactors, planned to build a six-reactor plant in Utah capable of generating 462 megawatts of power. However, the development was later abandoned after several municipalities pulled out of the deal over rising costs.
Some critics believe SMRs will never work. The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis predicted the reactors will be "too expensive, too slow to build, and too risky to play a significant role in transitioning away from fossil fuels."
Microsoft, BlackRock form fund to sink up to $100B into AI infrastructure Uncle Sam lends $1.5B to reignite Michigan nuclear plant in 2025 Microsoft cash to help reignite Three Mile Island atomic plant Datacenters bleed watts and cash – all because they're afraid to flip a switch It's worth noting that while nuclear may be hot right now, it's far from the only option datacenter operators can consider – even it if is one of the cleaner alternatives.
AWS, for instance, briefly weighed using natural gas fuel cells to power some of its Oregon datacenters as an alternative to grid power, and ultimately abandoned the plan. In the energy-constrained Irish market, Microsoft is using natural gas to keep several of its datacenters online.
But, if Redmond is to be believed, the 170 megawatt power plant containing some 22 gas generators only supplies power during periods when the national grid is unable to keep up with demand. ®
Updated to add at 2030 UTC, October 4 The US Department of Energy on Thursday announced it was pumping $1.5 billion into four transmission projects that should increase US grid capacity by 7.1GW, improve reliability, and hook Texas's isolated ERCOT grid into that national network.
Somehow, each of us has a far better intelligent machine in our skull, and the whole shebang runs on about 20 watts of power.
Does that sound like they’re on the right track to you?
“”and hook Texas’s isolated ERCOT grid into that national network.””
That is what the feds really want, a faucet they can drain Texas with and have control over the Texas grid.
Prep for blackouts, rolling blackouts and skyrocketing electricity bills.
No wonder they buried that detail in the very last sentence of the article.
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I canNOT believe that we’re finally going to upgrade the power system and start building nuclear reactors again... not because of EVs. Not because of population overrun that’s taxing energy systems. Not because we all have electronic devices or plasma TVs (which have been banned) or utilities and AC all of which we’re told not to use because there’s not enough energy in the world.
No... stupid AI bubble!
We have to have energy efficient cars and appliances and yet no one is crying about what AI is doing to the environment?
Exactly what I was thinking.
Could someone please explain to this sixth-grader what makes A.I. such an energy hog? I admit, I don’t get it.
Is Northern Texas a decent location for building some state of the art nuclear plants to fortify the grid there and allow for industrial expansion?
Server farms. Huge computer repositories with air conditioning. Huge electrical load.
Make them use wind and solar power. Problem solved, right?
Could someone please explain to this sixth-grader what makes A.I. such an energy hog? I admit, I don’t get it.
Answer: pornography and perverts
“AI’s energy appetite too big for Texas grid, regulators warn”
Not if Texas is PERMITTED to use their own resources.
LOL! Thank you both! I think I get it now: it takes tremendous amounts of electrical energy to whip up believable AI images and movies and store them on servers.
The closest parallel I’m aware of is how Youtube needs ever-increasing server space to hold everyone’s content, playlists, and backups.
“Could someone please explain to this sixth-grader what makes A.I. such an energy hog? I admit, I don’t get it.”
You
Could someone please explain to this sixth-grader what makes A.I. such an energy hog? I admit, I don’t get it
Copilot
Alright, let’s break it down like this: imagine your computer is running a super intense video game, with all the high-level graphics and fast-paced action. AI systems, especially those like me, are running a bunch of these “games” at once. To understand and respond to your questions, it has to do lots of calculations, similar to how your brain works when solving math p1gaming console) and these use a ton of energy to run and stay cool. It’s kind of like how your laptop gets warm when it’s on for a long time, but on a much bigger scale. And this constant demand for energy is why AI systems are such energy hogs! Cool, right?
So what will it be data centers or EV charging stations? We will likely have to keep the slide rulers and and horses just in case.
Thank you for taking the time to give that clear example. I understand the situation now. I’m not a video-gamer but now understand that A.I. image/content generators need a lot of server space to do what they do.
Not only should the data centers and AI users be responsible for their own electric, but whenever there is a shortage, we should shut down all non-essential Federal Agencies. Dept of ED, FBI, Fed Courts, DOJ, EPA, etc. All of those agencies have State components that can handle the requirements. We have Smart Meters, so those users can be easily identified and turned off remotely as needed. Texas citizens should not suffer because of irresponsible Feds.
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