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How AI labs are solving the power problem

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Re: How AI labs are solving the power problem

#91

Post by windexh8er »

Aurornis wrote: post #73
estearum wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 solution…

> I'm honestly curious whether you yourself are even aware of the disingenuousness of this argument. Unnecessarily condescending and smug, but I’ll try to respond. That said, you’re putting forth your own disingenuous assumptions and misconceptions. The natural gas turbines are an intermediate solution to get up and running due to the extremely long and arduous process of getting connected to the grid. Arguing pedant…

> The data centers are being built, sorry to anyone who gets triggered by that.

Unnecessarily smug?

Beyond that they can be stopped. They're being met with a lot of resistance in the Midwest as they're attempting to be built without much understanding of the public utilities impact. People are catching on to the fact that energy and water consumption is pushing up costs for residents. A lot of assumptions are supporting this argument.

> The gas turbines are an efficient way to power them while waiting for grid interconnect and longterm renewables to come online.

I like the gymnastics of wordplay here. Efficient only when you look at them through the lens of some ephemeral timeframe that may or may not exist.

Re: How AI labs are solving the power problem

#92

Post by TSiege »

Aurornis wrote: post #76
codingdave wrote: post #35

This is a really long way of saying "We need to burn fossil fuels to make more money." It didn't make long-term sense for our world before AI. It makes no more sense with AI.

> This is a really long way of saying "We need to burn fossil fuels to make more money." Like every other industry in the world? I’m kind of amazed that AI data centers have become the political talking point for topics like water usage and energy use when they’re just doing what every other energy-intensive industry does. The food arriving at your grocery store and the building materials that built your house also c…

The difference is that the food industry at least feeds me and a house provides me shelter. The people in charge of building AI data centers intend to replace all labor in using my own and leave me begging for peanuts, while also making energy and many goods more expensive and ruining the environment

Re: How AI labs are solving the power problem

#93

Post by HDThoreaun »

codingdave wrote: post #35

This is a really long way of saying "We need to burn fossil fuels to make more money." It didn't make long-term sense for our world before AI. It makes no more sense with AI.

More like it’s a really long way to say the government has utterly failed at making sure electricity generation and transmission capacity keeps up with demand so datacenters have been forced to get creative with alternative ways to power themselves. These companies absolutely want to use renewable energy from the power grid but the government blew it.

Re: How AI labs are solving the power problem

#94

Post by TSiege »

Aurornis wrote: post #76
codingdave wrote: post #35

This is a really long way of saying "We need to burn fossil fuels to make more money." It didn't make long-term sense for our world before AI. It makes no more sense with AI.

> This is a really long way of saying "We need to burn fossil fuels to make more money." Like every other industry in the world? I’m kind of amazed that AI data centers have become the political talking point for topics like water usage and energy use when they’re just doing what every other energy-intensive industry does. The food arriving at your grocery store and the building materials that built your house also c…

FYI Fairly certain this account is a bot. Acct created in 2023 and has 36k karma

Re: How AI labs are solving the power problem

#95

Post by bespokedevelopr »

I previously worked directly for some of the power generation manufacturers listed in the article and later on the grid/power transmission side.

My takeaway is they get it correct enough but no deep insight on the power generation industry.

I was surprised by and learned a few things from the article though. Definitely gives me some ideas of reaching out to old contacts to see if there’s any opportunities with building models and analytics for the new demands.

Focusing on Bloom is fun because they’re new and startup vibes but Innio and cat are really having a resurgence of demand with their generators and building diesel/natg engines is much simpler than gas turbines. I’m sure the heads at GE wish they hadn’t sold that off now.

On steam/gas turbine blade manufacturing there most certainly are more big players than 4 and many US based. You have to remember this is an old industry with existing supply chains and maintenance companies.

As long as the demand for new data centers doesn’t lose steam these onsite options will continue to flourish. Fed grid access builds are currently a 10+ year wait and they are reworking the system to be “fast”, only 5-6 years for build outs now. They’re also changing how the bidding process works which was touched on here. You need skin in the game if you want to be taken seriously now. There’s so many requests from companies arbing who can give them the best deal/timeline. Now you need to put money up if you even want a call back.

Re: How AI labs are solving the power problem

#96

Post by g8oz »

bob1029 wrote: post #30

> Wärtsilä, historically a ship engine manufacturer, realized the same engines that power cruise ships can power large AI clusters. It has already signed 800MW of US datacenter contracts. This seems like a big reach for me. Their largest engine (and it is absolutely massive) "only" produces 80MW of power. The Brayton cycle is unbeatable if you need to keep scaling power up to ridiculous levels.

They likely use multiple engines.

Re: How AI labs are solving the power problem

#97

Post by mikelitoris »

qchris wrote: post #77

I often like SemiAnalysis' work, but there's parts of this article that are shockingly under-researched and completely missing critical parts of the narrative. > 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. > Again, clever firms like xAI have fo…

More appropriate word is “sly” not “clever”.

Re: How AI labs are solving the power problem

#99

Post by doctorpangloss »

O5vYtytb wrote: post #72
pingou wrote: post #4

What about renewables + battery storage? Does it take much longer to build? I can imagine getting a permit can take quite a long time, but what takes so long to set up solar panels and link them to batteries, without even having to connect them to the grid?

How many batteries is that? If we're talking solar and you have say a 300MW datacenter and you need it to operate for 12 hours without sun you need at least two of the largest battery install in the world[1] at 1700MWh. That doesn't factor cloudy days. [1] https://www.heise.de/en/news/850-MW-World-s-largest-battery-...

Another POV is, if datacenters are really constrained by power, by all means, offer users a discount when their queries utilize solar. Millions of Americans drive further to save cents to fill up their tanks - you can’t say there isn’t precedent among normal people to deal with this. The better question is, is it really a constraint?
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