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Covering electricity price increases from our data centers

anthropic.com

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Re: Covering electricity price increases from our data centers

#61

Post by conductr »

pbmonster wrote: post #55
bob1029 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gas plants are only the most expensive in the simple cycle configuration. Combined cycle plants are competitive with other forms of baseload generation. The trouble is the response time. With day ahead forecasting, we can try to turn that peak load into base load. Grid operations are a non trivial part in how this AI energy situation plays out.

Batteries are an even bigger deal. You can completely stop building single stage peaker gas turbines when it gets economical to just drop a 2GW / 1 GWh battery pack next to every gas plant. When demand spikes, you just discharge the battery while you heat soak the steam turbine and the drum to prepare it for increased load.

We’re too busy cranking out disposable e-cig cartridge batteries with our limited battery capacity. It’s like we know what’s right but just can’t seem to do it.

Re: Covering electricity price increases from our data centers

#62

Post by xnx »

venk12 wrote: post #56

We've moved past asking where the energy comes from or how our planet will survive this critical phase. These days, it's about framing - every country is scrambling to up their game just to stay in power. The companies that are riding this wave are spending millions in marketing, lobbying and billions on consuming energy so that they can make trillions in valuation. I am also an ardent user of AI - but sometimes I do…

> sometimes I do feel guilty when I use so many tokens

There's nothing particularly worse about money spent on AI vs. anything else. I don't feel guilty for having 6 shirts even though I can only wear one at a time.

Re: Covering electricity price increases from our data centers

#63

Post by actionfromafar »

clarionbell wrote: post #60
actionfromafar wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How will that happen? China is building more generation as we speak. And I mean a lot . The gap is widening and the rate of change is even worse, thanks to "clean beautiful coal" or whatever Trump said.

You are aware that China is building dozens of new coal power plants right? Just this year they have commissioned 50.[1] Granted, it's less than before, but still much more than other developed countries. [1] https://abcnews.com/International/wireStory/china-building-c...

Yes, I am aware. They are increasing the energy output gap so much it's laughable, including coal. The MAGA administration isn't even building coal properly, but they are shuttering wind and solar. Wow, America! So much winning. China will catch up much sooner than anyone could believe thanks to GOP.

Re: Covering electricity price increases from our data centers

#64

Post by keybored »

keeda wrote: post #31
wlesieutre wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So with the AI is doing more of the work and you need less humans, what are you doing with the extra humans to eliminate their no-longer-productive resource consumption? Saying “we can do the same work with less resource use” doesn’t mean resource consumption is reduced. You’ve just gone from humans using resources to humans using the same resources and doing less work, plus AI using more resources.

The thing is, there are many interplaying dynamics here that are impossible to unravel. This is why I called it "napkin math", because figuring out the full ramifications of this change is a pretty large economic problem that nobody has figured out! For instance, I think operating at this level of productivity is unsustainable ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46938038 ). As discussed in detail by the recent "AI…

What I gather from your analysis and gleeful exclamation marks is that I should start rioting now rather than wait.

Re: Covering electricity price increases from our data centers

#65

Post by deaux »

venk12 wrote: post #56

We've moved past asking where the energy comes from or how our planet will survive this critical phase. These days, it's about framing - every country is scrambling to up their game just to stay in power. The companies that are riding this wave are spending millions in marketing, lobbying and billions on consuming energy so that they can make trillions in valuation. I am also an ardent user of AI - but sometimes I do…

> I am also an ardent user of AI - but sometimes I do feel guilty when I use so many tokens - because I know I am burning energy, and feeding part of this mission. If there is a solution, I would like to be a part of it.

This is by far the best article I've seen on it [0]. Which leads me to conclude: if you use coding agents, then yes, it's definitely a concern. Yet if you drive daily, even an EV, it's very small compared to that. Let alone flying. Personally, even if my "AI emissions" are at 10x his estimated usage (they almost certainly aren't), the other sacrifices I make to reduce emissions have such an impact that I'd still be multiple times below the national average.

Note how the above measures energy usage (kWh), not emissions. For anyone taking fossil fuel transit regularly, whether ICE car/taxi/airplane, AI usage is all but guaranteed to be meaningless compared to their transport emissions. One hamburger is at least 5x more emissions than his "median say with Claude Code", so there's another one. If you're feeling guilty, track how much beef you're eating, cut it down by 20% and use agents to your hearts content.

Now of course, a different form of AI usage like image generation and especially video generation is incomparably more energy-intensive per query. We'd need separate math on that.

[0] https://www.simonpcouch.com/blog/2026-01-20-cc-impact/

Re: Covering electricity price increases from our data centers

#66

Post by pjc50 »

venk12 wrote: post #56

We've moved past asking where the energy comes from or how our planet will survive this critical phase. These days, it's about framing - every country is scrambling to up their game just to stay in power. The companies that are riding this wave are spending millions in marketing, lobbying and billions on consuming energy so that they can make trillions in valuation. I am also an ardent user of AI - but sometimes I do…

> how our planet will survive this critical phase.

> trillions in valuation.

This is more or less literally the "yes we destroyed the planet, but for a brief moment we created trillions in shareholder value" meme. Perhaps we need to take a step back and ask to what extent this benefits humans as humans, not as economic units. Especially given the explicit threat in the AI marketing material to destroy all creative industries and replace human fulfilment and even connection with AI.

Re: Covering electricity price increases from our data centers

#67

Post by delaminator »

DoctorOetker wrote: post #57
delaminator wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US consumes 100 million aluminum soda cans per day. We lived without aluminum soda cans for 100k years

You can't compare soda cans with computational results, we can't teleport soda cans up and down cheaply, but we can cheaply beam data up and down.

Yes I can, on utilitarian grounds. We do it all the time, sending data centers to space is not zero cost externality.

Re: Covering electricity price increases from our data centers

#68

Post by missingdays »

what wrote: post #34
keeda wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These things are so hideously inefficient. Quite the opposite, really. I did some napkin math for energy and water consumption, and compared to humans these things are very resource efficient. If LLMs improve productivity by even 5% (studies actually peg productivity gains across various professions at 15 - 30%, and these are from 2024!) the resource savings by accelerating all knowledge workers are significant. Si…

How is a human consuming 27 gallons of water in an 8 hour work shift?

One burger for lunch is 660 gallons of water. So 27 is actually a very huge underestimation

Re: Covering electricity price increases from our data centers

#69

Post by Rexxar »

DoctorOetker wrote: post #49
DoctorOetker wrote: post #47

Please do hang your datacenters in space so as not to piss away your waste heat in our rivers, soils or atmosphere. Go to the bathroom upstairs, don't use our ecosystem as your latrines if you can direct it straight to the CMB.

I wish HN would have a downvote penalty mechanism, where the number of replies on comments you downvote should be at least x percent, say 50%. Oh no the burden of actually explaining why you want to de-emphasize a comment.

Maybe because your tone is needlessly aggressive and lot's of people don't want HN turns into Reddit/Twitter. There is enough people raging on everything on all social networks maybe we are here hopping to have more civilised discussions.

Re: Covering electricity price increases from our data centers

#70

Post by rkuykendall-com »

venk12 wrote: post #56

We've moved past asking where the energy comes from or how our planet will survive this critical phase. These days, it's about framing - every country is scrambling to up their game just to stay in power. The companies that are riding this wave are spending millions in marketing, lobbying and billions on consuming energy so that they can make trillions in valuation. I am also an ardent user of AI - but sometimes I do…

There are people who recognize there is a problem and would support collective action to fix it, and there are those that don't. As long as you are in the first group, there's nothing else you can individually do to make a difference.
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