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Data Centers Are Consuming Electricity Supplies - and Possibly Hurting the Environment (yahoo.com) 77
Data center construction "could delay California's transition away from fossil fuels and raise electric bills for everyone else," warns the Los Angeles Times — and also increase the risk of blackouts:
Even now, California is at the verge of not having enough power. An analysis of public data by the nonprofit GridClue ranks California 49th of the 50 states in resilience — or the ability to avoid blackouts by having more electricity available than homes and businesses need at peak hours... The state has already extended the lives of Pacific Gas & Electric Co.'s Diablo Canyon nuclear plant as well as some natural gas-fueled plants in an attempt to avoid blackouts on sweltering days when power use surges... "I'm just surprised that the state isn't tracking this, with so much attention on power and water use here in California," said Shaolei Ren, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC Riverside. Ren and his colleagues calculated that the global use of AI could require as much fresh water in 2027 as that now used by four to six countries the size of Denmark.
Driving the data center construction is money. Today's stock market rewards companies that say they are investing in AI. Electric utilities profit as power use rises. And local governments benefit from the property taxes paid by data centers.
The article notes a Goldman Sachs estimate that by 2030, data centers could consume up to 11% of all U.S. power demand — up from 3% now. And it shows how the sprawling build-out of data centers across America is impacting surrounding communities:
Driving the data center construction is money. Today's stock market rewards companies that say they are investing in AI. Electric utilities profit as power use rises. And local governments benefit from the property taxes paid by data centers.
The article notes a Goldman Sachs estimate that by 2030, data centers could consume up to 11% of all U.S. power demand — up from 3% now. And it shows how the sprawling build-out of data centers across America is impacting surrounding communities:
- The article notes that California's biggest concentration of data centers — more than 50 near the Silicon Valley city of Santa Clara — are powered by a utility emitting "more greenhouse gas than the average California electric utility because 23% of its power for commercial customers comes from gas-fired plants. Another 35% is purchased on the open market where the electricity's origin can't be traced." Consumer electric rates are rising "as the municipal utility spends heavily on transmission lines and other infrastructure," while the data centers now consume 60% of the city's electricity.
- Energy officials in northern Virginia "have proposed a transmission line to shore up the grid that would depend on coal plants that had been expected to be shuttered."
- In 2022 an Oregon newspaper discovered Google data centers were consuming 29% of one city's water supply.
- "Earlier this year, Pacific Gas & Electric told investors that its customers have proposed more than two dozen data centers, requiring 3.5 gigawatts of power — the output of three new nuclear reactors."
Why there? (Score:2)
Re:Why there? (Score:5, Interesting)
Data centers can be just about anywhere. Most companies build them where power is cheap. Why build more data centers in California?
One reason why so many data centers are located in the city of Santa Clara is that the city has its own electric utility and as a result, electricity rates are much lower than via the default Northern California utility PG&E.
Re: Why there? (Score:1)
Also no major weather events (Score:2)
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They can be anywhere, but they are best located near both consumers and a source of trained workers which can work on them. Both are still heavily concentrated in California.
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Trained workers? Isn't most of the point of a modern data center remote management?
You have to build it in the first place, which involves electrical, network, HVAC. Then once you have it built you have to rack and stack the gear. Once it's installed, there's a continuous process of replacing and upgrading gear, and fixing broken fans, AC chillers, and the like. It's not entirely hands-off, not yet.
That said, I don't know how many people you need to maintain a building of gear. My guess would be not more than a few hundred.
Re: Why there? (Score:3)
It's measured in dozens of people.
If you need extra resource you fit them in for the temporary project. Like construction.
It's easy, simple even. Latency can be a small issue, but you front that in a tiny data center. Do the heavy lifting in bumfuck anywhere.
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I've worked at several startups in the area since 2001. Locality is indeed important. Before the times of AWS and other public clouds you needed to have your own physical hardware, so you would go to local shops to get the hardware and then drive to the datacenter, get your hand scanned and take care of the hardware by hand. Even Netflix had local datacenters, for locality. Having the IT/OPS team work in the same building as the Development teams was practical especially before videoconferencing worked well
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They sort of should be near the users. Faster access with fewer hops. And that means something in the middle of Montana might be cheaper but everyone would still want a local replication of data nearer (for streaming at least).
Re: Why there? (Score:2)
Re: Why there? (Score:4, Insightful)
Dump the AI training and so much power and data center space saved... But CEOs are chasing the elusive new thing-that-might-make-money. Don't see why these companies don't just pay for the power, fund new power plants, etc. But standard business says to let consumers pay for infrastructure for easier leaching.
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Dump the AI training and so much power and data center space saved
No. Those AIs are critical for going through all the data that has been stored. Phone calls, emails, etc all need to be analyzed and there is a 50 year backlog. Some folks will escape Justice by dying before Justice can be meted out, but the sooner we get through the back log, the sooner we can get all of those bad people.
We will achieve Real-time crime protection within my lifetime. There will be no more secrets.
*blink* *blink*
Re: Why there? (Score:2)
Not the only factor (Score:3)
Seriously it's time to stop being shocked every time something new needs a lot of electric power, suck it up, and build more generation and transmission capacity to meet people's needs. We keep thinking megawatts and gigawatts when for long
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, suck it up, and build more generation and transmission capacity to meet people's needs
Which means higher electric bills for those who aren't causing the problem. Why should little old lady Simpson see her electric bills go up by 20% because some multi-billion dollar company builds a bunch of data centers?
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Why can't we lobby our state government regulatory commissions to set retail rates lower, since energy utilities typically make more from investing their cash hoards than they need for operations and maintenance?
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Got to stop letting CEOs make important decisions if they are this lazy and dumb. We have several locations where commercial rates are a freaking nickel. Washington and Tennessee have almost unlimited capacity.
I guarantee there were hours of tedious meetings going over the cost projections at a half dozen sites, and that included power, water, and labor. No one spends a billion dollars without examining the costs in great detail. If there's one thing CEOs and CFOs are good at, it's staring at spreadsheets and PowerPoints full of graphs.
CEOs might like moving company headquarters nearer their homes but I don't think they give a rat's ass whether a data center is close to the grunts' offices other than how much tra
Where's the profit? (Score:2)
It seems like all these companies have profit models based on data mining us. How is that even remotely profitable enough to justify this kind of build out and projected power consumption?
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Re:Where's the profit? (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, but consumers can only consume so much. It costs something to collect and collate data on me in hopes of selling me something... And doing so in direct competition with others with the same business model. The fact that they can extract profit from this is both amazing and sad and so, so wasteful.
Re: Where's the profit? (Score:2)
Re: Where's the profit? (Score:2)
Consumers aren't the only customers
Consumers aren't the customers.
They're just the cattle. Insurance and financial conglomerates are what pays their bills: your behavior derived from your data determines the risk on their insurance and mortgages. That's much bigger money than the crumbs they make on an ad for the next fastfood store or appliance.
CCC has some great vids from teams who researched the money flows from these suckers for data.
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Yeah, but consumers can only consume so much. It costs something to collect and collate data on me in hopes of selling me something... And doing so in direct competition with others with the same business model. The fact that they can extract profit from this is both amazing and sad and so, so wasteful.
Yes it is, but costs including waste are always part of a business model no matter what the business. No one would do it if there was no money to be made, no one works for free.
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Yeah, but consumers can only consume so much.
This isn't about consumers. It is about governments at the Federal and State level using AI to go through their backlog of business and citizen phone calls and emails and financial data. There is an almost endless amount of it stored and more is being stored each day. All that data needs to be analyzed and current AI can do it fairly effectively... it just takes energy.
State power will be fully entrenched in a completely dystopian manner. It can finally happen and it is happening.
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It seems like all these companies have profit models based on data mining us. How is that even remotely profitable enough to justify this kind of build out and projected power consumption?
Because users are easy and don’t give a fuck about privacy?
How do you think the last dozen Facebook data centers got justified and built.
Re:Where's the profit? (Score:4, Interesting)
It seems like all these companies have profit models based on data mining us. How is that even remotely profitable enough to justify this kind of build out and projected power consumption?
And that's why I didn't buy Google at $50. I thought for sure advertising couldn't be that lucrative. Alas, it is. The US spent about $280 billion in advertising last year. Getting even one more percent of that is a BFD.
You have to remember though that the trend now is for companies to outsource huge swaths of the compute. Rather than every Fortune 500 to 5000 company having their own data center, they rent from AWS/Azure/Google. That's what all these data centers do. It's not just user activity mining, it's running accounts payable and ecommerce sites.
Re: Where's the profit? (Score:2)
2022 (Score:4, Informative)
Then I noticed this was 2022 data and omits events like the recent Houston debacle that would put an additional 20 billion outage-minutes on the Texas reliability score card and easily shove it to last place
Re: 2022 (Score:2)
'Data centers' or 'AI'? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Not if your goal is anarchy followed by installation of a theocracy. True, Trump is not particularly religious, but he's evangelicals' best bet at a theocracy.
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Have they looked at the actual energy data? (Score:1)
https://www.eia.gov/energyexpl... [eia.gov]
Am I the only one who sees the two graphs (labeled "US primary energy production..." and "US primary energy consumption...") at the bottom of the linked website as telling a story of massive energy surplus in the US?
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https://www.eia.gov/energyexpl... [eia.gov]
Am I the only one who sees the two graphs (labeled "US primary energy production..." and "US primary energy consumption...") at the bottom of the linked website as telling a story of massive energy surplus in the US?
Yeah, that's odd. Transmission losses? It's not like we can store up endless buckets of Joules anywhere, not at that scale, not yet.
Re: Have they looked at the actual energy data? (Score:2)
What is the metric? (Score:3)
Re:What is the metric? (Score:4, Interesting)
Data centers use power. Power generation produces CO2. Lots of things use power and result in CO2 emissions so this is not news. The real question is how the CO2 generation from data centers scales relative to their economic output, value to society, or some similar metric when compared to other sources of greenhouse gas emissions.
Value to society is a fight now. I could give a flying fuck if a Facebook data center burned to the ground and took a few million profiles with it (even my own). But the Facebook junkie addicts would be screaming for data center “reform” within an hour.
Define “valued” data. Then see how much society agrees.
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Iffy.
Those same Facebook addicts when faced with the prospects of indulging their addictions or running the AC during a heatwave might come to a similar conclusion.
It seems more who are insulated from the affects of increased energy costs (or at least can absorb them more readily).
If no one can afford to keep the lights on, then there is no data to mine. Seems pretty obvious what has more "value". Or at least another footnote in the tragedy of the commons.
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Data centers use power. Power generation produces CO2. Lots of things use power and result in CO2 emissions so this is not news. The real question is how the CO2 generation from data centers scales relative to their economic output, value to society, or some similar metric when compared to other sources of greenhouse gas emissions.
I think there are two underlying thoughts.
First, data centers use a lot of energy. Way more than you'd think. That it's even noticeable on the state or country wide aggregates is kind of surprising to me and I work in the tech industry. Moreover, it's a growing slice. That's legitimate news, something most people probably don't know.
Second is the green pearl-clutching: "but, but, but, it's not exclusively using solar and wind!" Sure, no kidding. I checked one of the links in the fine summary. California and
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What if we already underuse our energy production capacity by at least ten percent so handling datacenters is really not a problem and the article is just fear-mongering, based on economic assumptions of scarcity of everything that are belied by the actual figures (see https://www.eia.gov/energyexpl... [eia.gov] )?
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We should be requiring new consumers to do everything they reasonably can to offset their consumption. Data centres should be covered with solar (also helps shade the building) and large battery packs (which give them UPS capability too), and investment in wind turbines (possibly elsewhere).
All new buildings should at least have solar.
Hard to measure the economic value of data. (Score:3)
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Why do decoupling laws explicitly disconnect retail energy prices from supply and demand in so many US states, such as Washington?
Only a Temporary Setback (Score:2)
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Jeez Avi, why are you posting Princeton links?
Possibly Severing Minced-Words, Tonight. (Score:4, Funny)
How about (Score:5, Insightful)
How about a title like "Data Centers Are Consuming Electricity Supplies - and preventing us from keeping under 1.5C"
The race to AI plus the *coin craze has pretty much thrown the Paris Agreement out the window. I wonder if we would have been able to keep under 1.5C without *coins and AI. I expect we would have been close, probably keeping under 2C. But with these items we will be lucky to keep under 3C.
Maybe start charging these data centers 20x the rate of residential rates.
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Add additional capacity for every new datacenter (Score:2)
Considering my electricity rates have increased by 50% since the Bit Coin Bros showed up,
it would not hurt my feelings if new Datacenters, Bit Coin Miners and other energy hogs stayed
well clear of this State unless they can install enough new generation to cover their own usage.
( Be it Solar, Wind, whatever )
Currently, cryptocurrency mining operations in this State alone consume 3,000 MW. . . . PER DAY.
My working theory is the Bit Coin Bros are consuming so much, they're keeping the demand
for electricity ar
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What if your utility companies pay lobbyists to bribe your state energy regulatory commission to keep raising rates, even though said utility companies actually make more than enough from their investments alone (including derivative price hedging books) to pay for operations and maintenance?
What if the utility companies benefit from keeping the idea of scarcity of electricity out there to keep raising their rates, when in fact it's like the cell phone companies pretending that data was limited at first bec
Power stations (Score:2)
Perfect place for SURGE PRICING! (Score:2)
"possibly" hurting the environment? (Score:2)
What a coocoo for cocoa puffs way to write that. The question isn't "is it hurting the environment. Of course it is. The question is how much and are the trade-offs worth it. (The answer is "no, they're not" but at least if you ask the sane question it's a discussion that can be had.)
build the capacity! (Score:2)
Not a single person in North America is thinking we have enough capacity- that as the economy grows, as the population grows, as the dependance on electricity and away from other forms of energy grows, as the demand for more computational power grows... that WE WILL NEED LESS ELECTRICITY capacity in the grid.
One of the biggest drivers for an economy is cheap, and plentiful electricity. We now have neither.
They opted for:
-The lie of conserve to be "greener" and save the planet.. just buy these expensive,
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"WE WILL NEED LESS ELECTRICITY"
Why do actual production and consumption figures show that consumption is decreasing as production increases (see https://www.eia.gov/energyexpl... [eia.gov] )?
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Energy is not Electricity, which is what that link addresses.
In terms of generating electricity, we generated more back in 2018 than we did in '23...
In terms of consumption at the consumer level - we're at the 6th lowest amount used/person in 24 years, but highest prices in those same 24 years- with industrial prices increasing at a much lower rate than the retail prices.
So I'm going to guess here and say the higher prices are causing peoples behavior to change and use less electricity.
All the stats aside,
"possibly"? That's rich... (Score:2)
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Why even shut people off when there's so much oversupply of electricity that wholesale prices often go negative?
Do you realize that the sound of power lines buzzing signals that there is a lot of undemanded electricity in the wires struggling to hard to get out that it arcs to the air and creates that buzzing sound?
Harm, help, or neutral to environment (Score:2)
Work from home has exploded, which means less fossil fuel usage for commuting, less energy usage and land use for offices and parking infrastructure.
Offices with fewer (or no) workers are using less electricity and less duplication of square footage needs for HVAC. (i.e. duplication of AC and heating for homes and offices)
More data center usage often correlates to productivity gains, hardware reuse and maximal utilization through sharing and virtualization, and centralizing HVAC and power needs at scale whi
Lack of resiliance? Not what I read. (Score:3)
Interesting to see this today as this morning's paper (San Jose Mercury) had a nice article about how California handled this summer's record heat wave with no shortages and not even a single Flex Alert requesting conservation during peak usage. How it never even got close, mostly due to the large availability of new battery storage, along with new and existing solar and wind capacity, that has been added over the past few years.
There are real concerns with major interconnects both between northern and southern Cal as well as to other states, but, due to the multi-megawatt battery installations in multiple areas in the state, triple digits in both ends of the state at the same time did not over-tax the system.
It's worth the energy. (Score:2)
Without all those data centers whirring away, I would have to write my own term papers. And Alexa would not be there to turn the thermostat down for me. It's definitely worth the energy cost.
How much is due to investment fads? (Score:1)
What if a state busts their butt to gain capacity, often at the expense of the environment, and then the AI bubble pops?
ROI's for AI looks suspiciously bubbly. I expect AI's usage to gradually advance, but based on past bubbles, such often initially expands too fast in the wrong places.
Possibly? Definitely (Score:3)