Here is a sombre lesson for the rest of the West, especially Australia, embracing the insane movement to go Green with renewable energy and abandon reliable fossil fuels. US Data centres are chewing up electricity in increasing amounts; the IT society was supposed to reduce energy needs, but instead has increased them. This is seen especially in Bitcoin mining, which requires, for some odd reason, "miners" to solve super-complex maths problems with super-computers, which in turn takes up as lot of energy. As detailed below, data centres are stressing already existing US power sources in many states, and the transition to renewables will make things even more uncertain.
The digital society is based upon the premise of reliable, abundant electricity, and if that goes down, it is not just lights off, but data gone as well. The Optus outage (perhaps hacking) in Melbourne last year was a small taste of the chaos that will come down the national suicide path of abandoning reliable fossil fuels in aid of a mythical climate change apocalypse.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/03/07/ai-data-centers-power/
"Vast swaths of the United States are at risk of running short of power as electricity-hungry data centers and clean-technology factories proliferate around the country, leaving utilities and regulators grasping for credible plans to expand the nation's creaking power grid.
In Georgia, demand for industrial power is surging to record highs, with the projection of new electricity use for the next decade now 17 times what it was only recently. Arizona Public Service, the largest utility in that state, is also struggling to keep up, projecting it will be out of transmission capacity before the end of the decade absent major upgrades.
Northern Virginia needs the equivalent of several large nuclear power plants to serve all the new data centers planned and under construction. Texas, where electricity shortages are already routine on hot summer days, faces the same dilemma.
The soaring demand is touching off a scramble to try to squeeze more juice out of an aging power grid while pushing commercial customers to go to extraordinary lengths to lock down energy sources, such as building their own power plants.
"When you look at the numbers, it is staggering," said Jason Shaw, chairman of the Georgia Public Service Commission, which regulates electricity. "It makes you scratch your head and wonder how we ended up in this situation. How were the projections that far off? This has created a challenge like we have never seen before."
A major factor behind the skyrocketing demand is the rapid innovation in artificial intelligence, which is driving the construction of large warehouses of computing infrastructure that require exponentially more power than traditional data centers. AI is also part of a huge scale-up of cloud computing. Tech firms like Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft are scouring the nation for sites for new data centers, and many lesser-known firms are also on the hunt.
The proliferation of crypto-mining, in which currencies like bitcoin are transacted and minted, is also driving data center growth. It is all putting new pressures on an overtaxed grid — the network of transmission lines and power stations that move electricity around the country. Bottlenecks are mounting, leaving both new generators of energy, particularly clean energy, and large consumers facing growing wait times for hookups.
The situation is sparking battles across the nation over who will pay for new power supplies, with regulators worrying that residential ratepayers could be stuck with the bill for costly upgrades. It also threatens to stifle the transition to cleaner energy, as utility executives lobby to delay the retirement of fossil fuel plants and bring more online. The power crunch imperils their ability to supply the energy that will be needed to charge the millions of electric cars and household appliances required to meet state and federal climate goals.
The nation's 2,700 data centers sapped more than 4 percent of the country's total electricity in 2022, according to the International Energy Agency. Its projections show that by 2026, they will consume 6 percent. Industry forecasts show the centers eating up a larger share of U.S. electricity in the years that follow, as demand from residential and smaller commercial facilities stays relatively flat thanks to steadily increasing efficiencies in appliances and heating and cooling systems.
Data center operators are clamoring to hook up to regional electricity grids at the same time the Biden administration's industrial policy is luring companies to build factories in the United States at a pace not seen in decades. That includes manufacturers of "clean tech," such as solar panels and electric car batteries, which are being enticed by lucrative federal incentives. Companies announced plans to build or expand more than 155 factories in this country during the first half of the Biden administration, according to the Electric Power Research Institute, a research and development organization. Not since the early 1990s has factory-building accounted for such a large share of U.S. construction spending, according to the group.
Utility projections for the amount of power they will need over the next five years have nearly doubled and are expected to grow, according to a review of regulatory filings by the research firm Grid Strategies."