I think you’ve misunderstood my point here. I’m not saying that data centers care about renewable energy, quite the opposite. I’m saying that the buildout of renewables has lead to enough surplus energy (in the intention to replace fossil fuels) such that tech companies said, what if we use that cheap power instead, and built up the demand for that power such that fossil fuels are not decommissioned but even increased like you pointed out. Off-grid power for data centers is because this demand is outstripping even the excess supply right now because everyone is demanding a piece of the pie. It’s wholly unsustainable and when it hits a wall it is going to be ugly.
Then I misunderstood that, but I still don’t agree. The “surplus energy” of the renewables is not really there. Granted, in some regions (not really sure about the USA, though, I don’t have data on that), renewables can provide > 100% of the required electricity for a few hours per day, but that’s not really a lot of surplus energy. If it was, they wouldn’t have to build power plants just for the data centers.
You even kind of mention that with
because this demand is outstripping even the excess supply
Electricity price definitely is a factor for data centers, but having electricity 24/7 is even more important to them. Also, what made AI feasible was the usage of GPUs or even more specialized hardware, that is tailored to those tasks. Machine learning as a concept has been around since the 1980s or even earlier, not just the last 20 years. Paradoxically, that increase in efficiency caused a drastic increase in total power consumption for AI.
I think you’ve misunderstood my point here. I’m not saying that data centers care about renewable energy, quite the opposite. I’m saying that the buildout of renewables has lead to enough surplus energy (in the intention to replace fossil fuels) such that tech companies said, what if we use that cheap power instead, and built up the demand for that power such that fossil fuels are not decommissioned but even increased like you pointed out. Off-grid power for data centers is because this demand is outstripping even the excess supply right now because everyone is demanding a piece of the pie. It’s wholly unsustainable and when it hits a wall it is going to be ugly.
Then I misunderstood that, but I still don’t agree. The “surplus energy” of the renewables is not really there. Granted, in some regions (not really sure about the USA, though, I don’t have data on that), renewables can provide > 100% of the required electricity for a few hours per day, but that’s not really a lot of surplus energy. If it was, they wouldn’t have to build power plants just for the data centers.
You even kind of mention that with
Electricity price definitely is a factor for data centers, but having electricity 24/7 is even more important to them. Also, what made AI feasible was the usage of GPUs or even more specialized hardware, that is tailored to those tasks. Machine learning as a concept has been around since the 1980s or even earlier, not just the last 20 years. Paradoxically, that increase in efficiency caused a drastic increase in total power consumption for AI.
I don’t think you’re reading what I’m writing, so I’m going to leave this here. Have a good one!