How AI labs are solving the power problem • Hacker News Board

Re: How AI labs are solving the power problem

#51

Post by estearum » Wed, Dec 31, 2025, 2:54 PM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #28

goda90 wrote: post #3

Power problem: solved Natural Gas supply problem: worsened Carbon in the atmosphere problem: worsened

The natural gas turbines used are relatively efficient as far as engines go. Having them on-site makes transmission losses basically negligible. Nothing short of full solar connected to batteries produced without any difficult to mine elements will make some people happy, but as far as pollution and fuel consumption data centers aren’t really a global concern at the same level as things like transportation.

I'm honestly curious whether you yourself are even aware of the disingenuousness of this argument. It's fairly impressive in its density!

1. Nobody complained about the efficiency of natural gas turbines. You can efficiently do a lot of useless stuff with deep negative externalities, and the fact it's efficient is not all that helpful.

2. Saying "the extreme far end would not be satisfied even by much better solutions" is not an excuse not to pursue better solutions!

3. There are many dimensions of this that people care about beyond the "global concern" level regarding "pollution and fuel consumption."

4. There are many problems that are significant and worth thinking about even if they are not the largest singular problems that could be included by some arbitrarily defined criteria

Re: How AI labs are solving the power problem

#52

Post by Symmetry » Wed, Dec 31, 2025, 2:56 PM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #22

Symmetry wrote: post #2

I found Boom's pivot much less confusing after this article.

Boom’s pivot to trying to build turbines for data centers wasn’t surprising when data center deployments started using turbines. Either their CEO saw one of the headlines or their investors forwarded it over and it became their new talking point. What is interesting is how many people saw the Boom announcement and came to believe that Boom was a pioneer of this idea. They’re actually a me-too that won’t have anything…

I had been under the mistaken impression that the turbines in airplanes were more different from the turbines in power plants than they actually are.

Re: How AI labs are solving the power problem

#53

Post by a1371 » Wed, Dec 31, 2025, 2:56 PM UTC

The problem is that most of the AI labs are popping up in TX that has a uniquely isolated electrical grid. Recall how the Texas cold snap a few years ago took down the grid for days. Turns out if you make a grid based on short term profit motifs, it's not going to be flexible enough to take new demand.

It's not the grid's technological limitation. We could have lived in a world with a more connected grid, more nibble utility commissions, and a lot less methane/carbon emissions as a result of it

Re: How AI labs are solving the power problem

#54

Post by torginus » Wed, Dec 31, 2025, 2:56 PM UTC

Symmetry wrote: post #2

I found Boom's pivot much less confusing after this article.

What I didn't get is afair Boom doesn't build engines, aren't they using some old 50s-60s fighter jet engines?

Re: How AI labs are solving the power problem

#55

Post by symbogra » Wed, Dec 31, 2025, 2:56 PM UTC

Really cool in depth report, thanks for sharing. It's very interesting to see what these big datacenter deployments are actually doing. Go look at the oil price charts for the last 25 years and you'll see why it makes a ton of sense economically.

I also love how you can see the physical evidence of them pitting jurisdictions against each other from the satellite photos with the data center on one side of a state border and the power generation on the other.

Re: How AI labs are solving the power problem

#56

Post by miltonlost » Wed, Dec 31, 2025, 2:56 PM UTC

sameesh wrote: post #21

"xAI entirely bypassed the grid and generated power onsite, using truck-mounted gas turbines and engines." So they solved the power problem by consuming more fossil fuel. Got it.

And all without the proper permits! Using 35 generators when they were only allowed 15! Yay! So glad we're allowing AI companies to break law after law after law to not be able to reason logically the basic Towers of Hanoi.

https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/03/xai-gets-permits-for-15-na...

Re: How AI labs are solving the power problem

#57

Post by imglorp » Wed, Dec 31, 2025, 2:57 PM UTC

lukan wrote: post #34

imglorp wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the air quality around these plants is poor, leading to health problems for the neighbors. This short term, destructive, thinking should be criminalized. I think it's time to discuss changing the incentives around ai deployment, specifically paying into a ubi fund whenever human jobs are replaced by ai. Musk himself raised the idea. https://www.indexbox.io/blog/tech-leaders-push-for-universal...

I assumed gas plants are pretty good in terms of air quality? Coal plants are bad.

In the case of Grok's turbines, no emissions controls means sick people. Plus all the CO2 pushing climate collapse faster which hurts every coming generation.

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/06/elon-musk-xai-memph...

Re: How AI labs are solving the power problem

#58

Post by beepbooptheory » Wed, Dec 31, 2025, 2:57 PM UTC

dale_glass wrote: post #46

beepbooptheory wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inference itself is also very costly! But either way, how many human lives are spent making that file?

Not really. I can generate images or get LLM answers in below 15 seconds on mundane hardware. The image generator draws many times faster than any normal person, and the LLM even on my consumer hardware still produces output faster than I can type (and I'm quite good at that), let alone think what to type.

Is "faster" really what we are talking about right now? It could be a lot faster to take a helicopter to work everyday too, versus riding a bike.

Also, why are people moving mountains to make huge, power obliterating datacenters if actually "its fine, its not that much"?

Re: How AI labs are solving the power problem

#59

Post by sam-cop-vimes » Wed, Dec 31, 2025, 2:58 PM UTC

thrance wrote: post #27

> Eighteen months ago, Elon Musk shocked the datacenter industry by building a 100,000-GPU cluster in four months. Multiple innovations enabled this incredible achievement, but the energy strategy was the most impressive. xAI entirely bypassed the grid and generated power onsite, using truck-mounted gas turbines and engines. Wow, "truck-mounted gas turbines"? Who else could have mastered such a futuristic tech in so…

I'm no fan of Musk, but you've got to admit it was a clever way to achieve the goal. SemiAnalysis don't do fanboy articles - their research is pretty in-depth. So they are stating it as they see it.

The problem ordinary people all over the world have is that governments are allowing this to happen. Maybe if there were stricter regulation it will prevent players such as Musk to come up with such "innovations".

Re: How AI labs are solving the power problem

#60

Post by macNchz » Wed, Dec 31, 2025, 3:01 PM UTC

lukan wrote: post #34

imglorp wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the air quality around these plants is poor, leading to health problems for the neighbors. This short term, destructive, thinking should be criminalized. I think it's time to discuss changing the incentives around ai deployment, specifically paying into a ubi fund whenever human jobs are replaced by ai. Musk himself raised the idea. https://www.indexbox.io/blog/tech-leaders-push-for-universal...

I assumed gas plants are pretty good in terms of air quality? Coal plants are bad.

Gas is certainly less of a problem than coal, but they still produce plenty of bad stuff: nitrogen oxides and bad VOCs like formaldehyde that are well studied to increase risk of asthma and some types of cancer. I certainly wouldn’t want to live close to one.