This $1,000,000,000 AI data centre could dump 23 nuclear bombs worth of energy per day
What could be one of the world’s largest data centres – the warehouses that power AI – could dump 23 atomic bombs’ worth of energy per day.
The 40,000-acre Stratos Project Area, which would be kept ticking by a gas power plant, was approved by Box Elder County in Utah this month.
It will eventually gobble up about 9GW of power every single day – the UK generated 22.7GW of power yesterday, according to the National Grid...
If you need more analogies, it’s the equivalent of: ‘40,000 Walmart Supercenters, 2-3 New York Cities and 13 Back To The Future DeLorean time machines.’
According to... er... AI -
Location and Size
The Stratos Project Area spans approximately 40,000 acres in western Box Elder County, Utah, primarily in Hansel Valley and Locomotive Valley, divided by a small mountain range. The site is remote, about 15–20 miles from the nearest town, and includes unincorporated land, private property, and areas near Hill Air Force Base and Utah National Guard facilities
4 comments:
Hmm. 9GW of power, of course, requires 9GW worth of cooling. So where is the heat going to go? Hansel Valley, Utah looks (on Google Maps) to be basically desert with a dry streambed running through it, so not much in the way of cooling water to be had. So it will have to go into the air. If my arithmetic is correct, that's about 300,000 cubic metres of air per second if they warm it up by 25 degrees C. They could, for example, build a chiller plant with an exhaust outlet 125m (410 ft) high by 125m wide blasting out a literal gale (19 m/s) of hot air.
That should have an interesting effect on the local weather.
Barbarus - yes, the objections seem to focus on waste heat going into the atmosphere and adding significant warmth to the local weather. Whether that would happen must depend on winds, convection and so on, but it could turn out to be great for glider pilots.
A graduate from Cummins Motors, recently told me the power that the huge engines the company makes, needs to supply the average sized data centre, it was colossal. The thought flitted through my mind, that renewable energy was not going to be up to it.
Tammly - to my mind renewable energy is best seen as racketeering. It has niche applications and is worth researching, but the fanatical political push we see can't possibly be honest.
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