HASHEM'S RED LINE

11 Kislev 5786
Shavua Tov! 

And the Lord said, "Lo! they are one people, and they all have one language, and this is what they have commenced to do. Now, will it not be withheld from them, all that they have planned to do?    (Bereishit 11.6)

The Unsustainable Strain Of AI’s Insatiable Power Needs

The rapid proliferation of services powered by artificial intelligence, ranging from the genuinely useful to the frivolous to the unnecessary, has a common element: the need for vast amounts of electricity and water for the data centers that make them possible.

In the last two years, hundreds of so-called hyperscale data centers have been built across the U.S., straining the ability of utilities to provide them with the power they need to run and water to keep them cool. In New Carlisle, Indiana, for instance, an Amazon-owned complex of data centers operated by Anthropic already needs at least 500 megawatts of electricity, enough to power hundreds of thousands of individual homes, according to The Atlantic. When completed, the sprawling facility will use as much power as two Atlantas, the story estimates. Until recently, such facilities, typically in rural areas or small towns, were generally well received, seen as a sign of local progress despite the fact that they create relatively few jobs or economic benefits.

But amid spiking household electricity rates–up nearly 10% this year, largely due to data centers–things are starting to change. More communities are realizing how much they strain existing infrastructure, and across the U.S., including in Arizona, Virginia and Ohio, there’s local pressure to slow or halt new data centers. A survey of New Jersey voters finds that a majority want the facilities to pay higher energy rates, while a Wisconsin poll finds most voters don’t think data centers provide sufficient benefits to offset their cost.

That challenge is further complicated by the Trump administration’s bewildering reversal of federal incentives for large-scale renewable power projects, including solar and wind farms with battery storage. Such facilities that are already in the pipeline will be built through at least next year, but the policy shift means the outlook for cheap new sources of electricity will taper off later in the decade. That’s a problem because they are faster to build and cheaper to operate than natural gas or coal plants. Promising geothermal power projects, which still have federal support, could be integrated into data centers but are mainly in the early planning stage. Next-generation small nuclear reactors or even clean fusion power could be carbon-free energy gamechangers, but neither is likely to be in widespread commercial use for years.

A survey by Sunrun, the top U.S. installer of residential solar and battery systems, underscored the growing concern Americans have over rising power prices and data centers. Of the 1,000 people interviewed, 80% are worried that data centers will keep driving up residential power prices.