YSK about the resource consumption of datacenters
3 days ago by Aniki to c/youshouldknow
The report finds that data centers consumed about 4.4% of total U.S. electricity in 2023 and are expected to consume approximately 6.7 to 12% of total U.S. electricity by 2028. The report indicates that total data center electricity usage climbed from 58 TWh in 2014 to 176 TWh in 2023 and estimates an increase between 325 to 580 TWh by 2028.
I see a lot of people arguing about datacenters and their resource consumption. So i think it is good to have actual numbers on how much resources are being consumed. This post only includes energy consumption because i'm too lazy to look up water consumption.
China is largely focusing on the only good parts of AI. The scientific data that can be gained from specialized processing. They're not going all in on chatbots. Even though they've got the green energy to to it. So in that respect, they're already leading. The US is just racing to bottom.
"Oh no the Ai assholes outbid the state gov and we had to put our health and courts data on bluehost and it died in a fire and now manson is gonna go free" is how that goes.
Make sure in your planning to require state and muni govs to build and run their own DCs or we're in for a crunch. Their habitual outsourcing is gonna suck soon.
This post only includes energy consumption because i'm too lazy to look up water consumption.
Water consumption varies based on how they're built. Regular ones are air-cooled but that's slightly more expensive and hits electrics a bit harder.
That's "slightly more power and cost" vs "drinking all our water" is a hard call for some, even in Arizona.
Sounds like they are burning money there. They are not making that money back.
Okay but these numbers don’t represent the portion of electricity they use in the city they occupy.
electricity is easily transported over 50+ miles so it makes sense to look at it state-wide.
I'm pretty sure everyone knows.
That's not really that much.
Usage had doubled in ~10 years, and is expected to double or triple in just 5 years. That rate of growth will put usage above 30% within a decade, and that's just datacenters.. add another decade and you're looking at 50% usage or more.
We'd likely have more sources of energy, but as you know not all energy sources are renewable, so what's the long term plan?
Generally all new energy capacity comes from renewables, so that's not a problem.
The usage is not that bad because everything hosted in datacenters is significant portion of our lives
‘Burning down the forest isn’t that bad because it keeps us warm for a while’
I don't disagree, I think the main issue I can see is the rate of growth. I know renewable energy is increasing but I guess I just haven't seen the numbers for that to quell the worry a lot of people have. From a pessimistic view it feels very capitalist to allow this amount of usage for the sake of business. And let's be honest, a lot of data centers are running services the world doesn't need
For being such an integral and important part of lives of literally everyone - no
It is. But these numbers don’t tell the whole story. Some data centers use more electricity than all the rest of the city in some locations.
This compares them to the whole US. We don’t buy electricity from the whole US. The grid doesn’t work that way.
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The public should not have to foot the bill for any of this.
Just let China have this "race". I'm not afraid of being 2nd place. Who really cares about AI when it's effect on the concrete world is so minimal and non-deterministic?
Wake me up when we can actually count on a robot making a delivery or stopping a criminal. Generating tokens isn't doing shit in the real world.
When that is regularly happening without failure, we can just regulate the robots themselves.
save