CoreWeave Data Center To Double City's Power Needs (yahoo.com) 30
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: CoreWeave is expanding a data center that is projected to double the electricity needs of a city near Dallas, another example of the strains that artificial intelligence workloads are placing on the US power supply. Local officials have grappled with how to handle the increased stress on the electricity grid from the project, according to a late 2024 presentation and emails seen by Bloomberg. The site is being developed by Core Scientific and will be used by OpenAI in Denton, Texas. Last week, CoreWeave announced it would acquire Core Scientific for about $9 billion, in part, to gain direct control of its data centers aimed at supplying AI work.
Denton, about 50 miles northwest of Dallas, has almost doubled its population in the last 25 years to about 166,000 residents. To meet the spike in AI-related power demand, the city is passing on any extra costs to the data center operator and constructing additional grid infrastructure, Antonio Puente, general manager of local utility Denton Municipal Electric, said in an interview. "To serve the entire load from Core Scientific, we do have some transmission challenges," Puente said. "We will have to make some additional transmission investments." [...] Like some other large AI data center projects, the site in Denton was focused on cryptocurrency mining before pivoting to AI workloads in December. This transition means unrelenting power consumption -- the site will no longer curtail operations when power prices are high -- which will increase grid strain. "Now you're talking about a facility that has to have energy 24 hours a day, 365 days a year," Puente said. That challenge will be mitigated by the addition of backup generators and batteries, he added.
Unlike many large projects, the Denton data center didn't receive local tax exemptions. Officials expect more than $600 million in property and sales tax from the data center expansion, more than double the costs it plans to incur, according to an analysis document seen by Bloomberg. It also anticipates that 135 new jobs will be created, according to the document. The Denton site, which is already being rented by CoreWeave, is Core Scientific's largest planned project at about 390 megawatts of power. It's "utilizing the majority of extra system capacity" in the city, wrote a utility executive in a January email seen by Bloomberg. Any additional large power users will exacerbate overloads on the grid, the executive added. "When fully built out, it will host one of the largest GPU clusters in North America," Core Scientific Chief Executive Officer Adam Sullivan said of the site during a May call. "Denton is a flagship facility."
The report notes that Texas could face electricity shortages as soon as 2026 due to surging power demand from data centers, oil and gas operations, and crypto mining.
Denton, about 50 miles northwest of Dallas, has almost doubled its population in the last 25 years to about 166,000 residents. To meet the spike in AI-related power demand, the city is passing on any extra costs to the data center operator and constructing additional grid infrastructure, Antonio Puente, general manager of local utility Denton Municipal Electric, said in an interview. "To serve the entire load from Core Scientific, we do have some transmission challenges," Puente said. "We will have to make some additional transmission investments." [...] Like some other large AI data center projects, the site in Denton was focused on cryptocurrency mining before pivoting to AI workloads in December. This transition means unrelenting power consumption -- the site will no longer curtail operations when power prices are high -- which will increase grid strain. "Now you're talking about a facility that has to have energy 24 hours a day, 365 days a year," Puente said. That challenge will be mitigated by the addition of backup generators and batteries, he added.
Unlike many large projects, the Denton data center didn't receive local tax exemptions. Officials expect more than $600 million in property and sales tax from the data center expansion, more than double the costs it plans to incur, according to an analysis document seen by Bloomberg. It also anticipates that 135 new jobs will be created, according to the document. The Denton site, which is already being rented by CoreWeave, is Core Scientific's largest planned project at about 390 megawatts of power. It's "utilizing the majority of extra system capacity" in the city, wrote a utility executive in a January email seen by Bloomberg. Any additional large power users will exacerbate overloads on the grid, the executive added. "When fully built out, it will host one of the largest GPU clusters in North America," Core Scientific Chief Executive Officer Adam Sullivan said of the site during a May call. "Denton is a flagship facility."
The report notes that Texas could face electricity shortages as soon as 2026 due to surging power demand from data centers, oil and gas operations, and crypto mining.
Why build in Dallas (Score:2)
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You would think that a place like northern Minnesota would have a much lower risk of tropical storm damage.
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True, but AGW isn't only making every place and situation hotter, sometimes it's making them colder. What good is your data center when you cannot get power because the lines are down? Or when the big square building with the big flat roof gets buried under a metric fuckton of snow and the roof collapses?
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And a much more stable electricity grid that is actually connected to resources in other states, and not run by idiots.
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And a much more stable electricity grid that is actually connected to resources in other states, and not run by idiots.
I'd trust the local idiots that live in the state to keep the electrical grid stable more than the idiots that live in DC for something like 10 months of the year.
There's no telling if being connected to an interstate grid would have saved the grid from going down. With solar PV panels covered in snow as a contributing factor would being subject to federal rules that come with an interstate grid really have made a difference? What of the problems of natural gas lines getting plugged up inside because mois
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I would wager the political environment is more friendly in Dallas.
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Yes, the free money readily flows by the tens of millions for private companies in Texas, but not when it comes to protecting people's lives [apnews.com].
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Yes, the free money readily flows by the tens of millions for private companies in Texas, but not when it comes to protecting people's lives.
In my mind the failure in the system wasn't in the lack of warning sirens of an impending flash flood, it was allowing the construction of structures meant for housing sleeping children in an area known for flash floods.
There's some responsibility of the loss of life on any government agency that allowed for habitable structures in a flood plain. Then there is some responsibility on those that did the construction, both the people that laid out the buildings at the camp and those that did the construction.
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The camp was in a known flood zone. That entire area is a flood zone. They petitioned the government to remove their camp from the flood zone [npr.org] so they could build more buildings in the flood zone.
The commissioners in Kerr County asked Texas to get the money to upgrade and improve the early warning system [statesman.com] for this area. Every time Texas couldn't find the money. As one
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The camp was in a known flood zone. That entire area is a flood zone. They petitioned the government to remove their camp from the flood zone so they could build more buildings in the flood zone.
A quick search of the web tells me the last time they saw anything close to this level of flooding was in 1987, and even then it would have been something like a century or so ago when they saw anything worse. That's certainly enough time to pass to allow memories to fade and people lose some fear of flooding. It's just human nature.
In addition, some of the county commissioners voted against upgrading the system.
They had an informal system of warning people by telephone which was believed to be sufficient. Also, I went over a number of ways for flood warnings to get to people besides
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Electricity is far cheaper, plus Texas is littered with former Bitcoin mine operations. I'm in this business (immersion cooling these things) and it isn't hard to transition from Bitcoin to GPU cards.
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They could significantly cut their power usage if they built in like northern Minnesota where they would have natural cooling much of the year and not need mechanical cooling year round like they would in Dallas.
What is the cost of electricity in Minnesota? While the cooling costs may be lower, if the price of electricity is higher, it may be cheaper to operate near Dallas (it is the total operational costs that matters, not just one part).
Re: Why build in Dallas (Score:2)
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They buy in Dallas because they can get electricity for less than 4 cents per kwh. Probably some from behind the meter. That'll pay for a boatload of air conditioning.
Mark my words (Score:5, Insightful)
Within 10 years half the people on this forum who are still alive and who still have electricity and water will have come to believe that people aren't entitled to water and electricity.
We are rapidly becoming the kind of third world hell hole that so many people like to scorn.
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And what will all this power produce? (Score:2)
A load of 2nd rate hallucinated slop to fool idiots into handing over their money. The hype is bad enough, but when it starts to impact on normal peoples lives for basic services its time for someone to call time on it.
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A load of 2nd rate hallucinated slop to fool idiots into handing over their money.
Gee - you say that as though it's a bad thing. /sarc
There's a reason I call broligarchs "the parasite class".
genAI is just a long line of tech... (Score:4, Funny)
It's just a long line of tech where the basis is "things my mom used to do for me". Mom used to drive you around? Start uber. Mom used to get your food? Doordash and instacart. Mom used to make disgusting fresh juice? Juicero. Mom used to tell you how great you are and then gave you a bedtime story? Generative AI.
Make these companies pay (Score:4, Insightful)
What it is time for is to make these corporations pay for not just the power they draw, but also the increased infrastructure expenses that are being passed on to EVERYONE just so individual companies can make a profit. If an electric company needs to build new generators, pay for infrastructure/distribution upgrades, and all of that just for these companies that want to profit from AI, then these companies should pay for ALL of it, not just the power used.
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What it is time for is to make these corporations pay for not just the power they draw, but also the increased infrastructure expenses ...
... and the increased global warming, whose likely consequences include a higher cost of living, higher death rate, pandemics, waves of environmental refugees, and so on.
That's where the big-time expenses begin. And guess what - those expenses will also be "externalized" so that corporations and shareholders won't suffer financial losses.
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You have gone off on a bit of a tangent to the issue. The power generation could come from solar or anything else, but it still comes down to, "if new power generation is needed to supply power to these devices, then those who draw the most power should be the ones to pay for the infrastructure and other higher costs. Basically, my bills shouldn't go up just because someone decides to start a power hungry business that doesn't benefit me or the rest of society.
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What it is time for is to make these corporations pay for not just the power they draw, but also the increased infrastructure expenses that are being passed on to EVERYONE just so individual companies can make a profit. If an electric company needs to build new generators, pay for infrastructure/distribution upgrades, and all of that just for these companies that want to profit from AI, then these companies should pay for ALL of it, not just the power used.
Aren't these companies building large data centers paying for the increased infrastructure expenses? I've seen news of Microsoft funding the restart of a recently shut down nuclear power plant, the Crane Clean Energy Center. There's more reports like it, often investments in nuclear fission or nuclear fusion as they need power 24/7, not just when the sun shines or the wind blows.
I also recall something about a data center being built right next door to some large power plant to avoid the costs of long tra
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When I buy shit from Amazon, does Amazon also charge me for the increased infrastructure expenses required to deliver the stuff to me? Warehouses, drivers, trucks, all that?
No, of course not, that's something they figure into the price in the first place.
Scale of META planned datacenter (Score:1)
https://x.com/SawyerMerritt/st... [x.com]
We're building several multi-GW clusters. We're calling the first one Prometheus and it's coming online in '26. We're also building Hyperion, which will be able to scale up to 5GW over several years. We're building multiple more titan clusters as well. Just one of these covers a significant part of the footprint of Manhattan.
Put solar + battery nearby (Score:2)
If you are going to build a power-sucking data center, at least put SOME solar + battery nearby so you aren't straining the local grid (as much).