9GW datacentre approved.
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9GW datacentre approved. I'm trying to get my head round the scale of this. The whole of the UK uses about 40GW of electricity. So this one facility is a quarter of the UK grid. In one location. I had to look up box elder county on Wikipedia. "Its territory includes large tracts of barren desert,". Right, so a datacentre that uses the same amount of electricity as a quarter of the UK. In a fucking desert. And that's before we even consider the CO2 emissions. Yikes.
New AI data center in Utah will generate and consume more than twice the amount of power the entire state uses — Kevin O'Leary's 9 Gigawatt Utah data center campus approved
The 40,000-acre project will run entirely off-grid using natural gas.
Tom's Hardware (www.tomshardware.com)
@quixoticgeek that's ~45 CERNs?! WTF?
Forty five of the thing they joked might be able to create a black hole and end the world, in a single site?
~ one Saturn 5 F1 main engine burning constantly for the life time of the site not just a few hundred seconds
This is a stupid amount of energy use. -
@ferricoxide Utah being in the US. Yes, it's very similar to what's going on in the US...
@quixoticgeek@v.st
Oop. I saw the UK mention and didn't see that my instance had hidden the link behind a "more" button. So, assumed reference was to the UK allowing similar idiocy to what's going on in the US. -
Based on an estimate of 500g CO2/kWh, the one facility would emit ~40MT of CO2 a year. If this one facility was a country, it would rank about 67th, just behind Bulgaria.
Concentrating this much energy use in a single location is going to change weather patterns. The environmental impact is just mind boggling.
The AI bubble can't burst soon enough.
@quixoticgeek Cast iron proof that it's a boondoggle: they're powering it with fossil fuels because they know the bubble will burst before the TTBE of renewables.
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@quixoticgeek that's ~45 CERNs?! WTF?
Forty five of the thing they joked might be able to create a black hole and end the world, in a single site?
~ one Saturn 5 F1 main engine burning constantly for the life time of the site not just a few hundred seconds
This is a stupid amount of energy use.@quixoticgeek hang on the thing runs on gas, so an f1 engine gives a vague idea of how much gas its going to need. ~A Saturn five first stage fuel tank every fifteen minutes (rounding to a nice round number)
If you've ever seen a person standing next to a Saturn five you have an idea how utterly absurd an amount of fuel that is.
With out the pipeline that places shuts down. And we thought the back hoe through the fiber link was a bad problem. -
@quixoticgeek@v.st
Sounds not unlike what's going on in the US.
Datacenter builders love deserts:
* Land is cheap
* Large, contiguous chunks of land are easier to come by
* Fewer neighbors to contend with
* Generally less stuff that needs to be bulldozed to build the datacenter, itself, and the infrastructure that feeds it.@ferricoxide @quixoticgeek "Datacenter builders love deserts"
..and deserts usually have such a plentiful supply of water for cooling.
Presumably they will take the water from Lake Powell?
The costs of surging water into drought-depleted Lake Powell will be widespread
Lake Powell is at just 23% capacity and approaching the point where water won't be able to flow into its hydroelectric turbines without air causing damage.
KUER (www.kuer.org)
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@quixoticgeek
Solar & wind are still cheaper than gas though, so still a weird choice
@CppGuyThey're building the thing in a desert, i.e. an expanse of unused space. If they had to build this monstrosity at all, they could have used some of that space for renewable energy generation.
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@quixoticgeek
Solar & wind are still cheaper than gas though, so still a weird choice
@CppGuy@syklemil @quixoticgeek @CppGuy
They will be building power plants for that because no state has 9GW power lying around or spare, not even talking about the cables and infrastructure you'd need to even get the energy there.
And since this is a desert, i assume there isn't much water around for cooling.
Also, i can only guess the number of backup generators they'd need to secure operation. Gas powered of course. And are they talking about carbon neutrality? Being the good greenwashing company? -
9GW datacentre approved. I'm trying to get my head round the scale of this. The whole of the UK uses about 40GW of electricity. So this one facility is a quarter of the UK grid. In one location. I had to look up box elder county on Wikipedia. "Its territory includes large tracts of barren desert,". Right, so a datacentre that uses the same amount of electricity as a quarter of the UK. In a fucking desert. And that's before we even consider the CO2 emissions. Yikes.
New AI data center in Utah will generate and consume more than twice the amount of power the entire state uses — Kevin O'Leary's 9 Gigawatt Utah data center campus approved
The 40,000-acre project will run entirely off-grid using natural gas.
Tom's Hardware (www.tomshardware.com)
@quixoticgeek and isn't 'natural gas' just the most newspeak name for a fossil fuel.
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@quixoticgeek and isn't 'natural gas' just the most newspeak name for a fossil fuel.
@artemis ok. So natural gas is because for many years the gas network in most places was derived from coal gas, or town gas, whereby coal was heated up to produce coke, which was used in things like steel production, and the gas was then piped locally to homes and businesses. Natural gas as a fuel source is relatively recent. In the UK we're talking later half of the 20th century.
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9GW datacentre approved. I'm trying to get my head round the scale of this. The whole of the UK uses about 40GW of electricity. So this one facility is a quarter of the UK grid. In one location. I had to look up box elder county on Wikipedia. "Its territory includes large tracts of barren desert,". Right, so a datacentre that uses the same amount of electricity as a quarter of the UK. In a fucking desert. And that's before we even consider the CO2 emissions. Yikes.
New AI data center in Utah will generate and consume more than twice the amount of power the entire state uses — Kevin O'Leary's 9 Gigawatt Utah data center campus approved
The 40,000-acre project will run entirely off-grid using natural gas.
Tom's Hardware (www.tomshardware.com)
People need to understand that these datacentres are not just for generating fun pics, they're intended to replace workers en masse, and they're going to ultimately replaces wages.
And there's no way Universal Basic Income will be even considered, and notwithstanding the BS that Musk has been spouting recently in favour of UBI.
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@quixoticgeek I would like to bring in a completely different aspect:
As the data centre runs entirely on natural gas, sabotaging the whole facility seems to be quite an easy thing to do.@Seb1982 @quixoticgeek
Disable the cooling system. -
9GW datacentre approved. I'm trying to get my head round the scale of this. The whole of the UK uses about 40GW of electricity. So this one facility is a quarter of the UK grid. In one location. I had to look up box elder county on Wikipedia. "Its territory includes large tracts of barren desert,". Right, so a datacentre that uses the same amount of electricity as a quarter of the UK. In a fucking desert. And that's before we even consider the CO2 emissions. Yikes.
New AI data center in Utah will generate and consume more than twice the amount of power the entire state uses — Kevin O'Leary's 9 Gigawatt Utah data center campus approved
The 40,000-acre project will run entirely off-grid using natural gas.
Tom's Hardware (www.tomshardware.com)
@quixoticgeek and there is an even bigger one planned .. link in the article.
I am really not sure where the money will be to pay for all this computing...
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9GW datacentre approved. I'm trying to get my head round the scale of this. The whole of the UK uses about 40GW of electricity. So this one facility is a quarter of the UK grid. In one location. I had to look up box elder county on Wikipedia. "Its territory includes large tracts of barren desert,". Right, so a datacentre that uses the same amount of electricity as a quarter of the UK. In a fucking desert. And that's before we even consider the CO2 emissions. Yikes.
New AI data center in Utah will generate and consume more than twice the amount of power the entire state uses — Kevin O'Leary's 9 Gigawatt Utah data center campus approved
The 40,000-acre project will run entirely off-grid using natural gas.
Tom's Hardware (www.tomshardware.com)
@quixoticgeek Just the thing we need in the middle of a climate crisis.
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9GW datacentre approved. I'm trying to get my head round the scale of this. The whole of the UK uses about 40GW of electricity. So this one facility is a quarter of the UK grid. In one location. I had to look up box elder county on Wikipedia. "Its territory includes large tracts of barren desert,". Right, so a datacentre that uses the same amount of electricity as a quarter of the UK. In a fucking desert. And that's before we even consider the CO2 emissions. Yikes.
New AI data center in Utah will generate and consume more than twice the amount of power the entire state uses — Kevin O'Leary's 9 Gigawatt Utah data center campus approved
The 40,000-acre project will run entirely off-grid using natural gas.
Tom's Hardware (www.tomshardware.com)
@quixoticgeek this is so painful to read
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9GW datacentre approved. I'm trying to get my head round the scale of this. The whole of the UK uses about 40GW of electricity. So this one facility is a quarter of the UK grid. In one location. I had to look up box elder county on Wikipedia. "Its territory includes large tracts of barren desert,". Right, so a datacentre that uses the same amount of electricity as a quarter of the UK. In a fucking desert. And that's before we even consider the CO2 emissions. Yikes.
New AI data center in Utah will generate and consume more than twice the amount of power the entire state uses — Kevin O'Leary's 9 Gigawatt Utah data center campus approved
The 40,000-acre project will run entirely off-grid using natural gas.
Tom's Hardware (www.tomshardware.com)
@quixoticgeek how much water then? Where's it coming from?
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@quixoticgeek how much water then? Where's it coming from?
@ehproque dunno. I'm scared of the answer.
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9GW datacentre approved. I'm trying to get my head round the scale of this. The whole of the UK uses about 40GW of electricity. So this one facility is a quarter of the UK grid. In one location. I had to look up box elder county on Wikipedia. "Its territory includes large tracts of barren desert,". Right, so a datacentre that uses the same amount of electricity as a quarter of the UK. In a fucking desert. And that's before we even consider the CO2 emissions. Yikes.
New AI data center in Utah will generate and consume more than twice the amount of power the entire state uses — Kevin O'Leary's 9 Gigawatt Utah data center campus approved
The 40,000-acre project will run entirely off-grid using natural gas.
Tom's Hardware (www.tomshardware.com)
Now that the tech exists to generate fabulous amounts of energy, tech and energy oligarchs immediately found ways to waste it to keep it out of the peasants' reach.
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9GW datacentre approved. I'm trying to get my head round the scale of this. The whole of the UK uses about 40GW of electricity. So this one facility is a quarter of the UK grid. In one location. I had to look up box elder county on Wikipedia. "Its territory includes large tracts of barren desert,". Right, so a datacentre that uses the same amount of electricity as a quarter of the UK. In a fucking desert. And that's before we even consider the CO2 emissions. Yikes.
New AI data center in Utah will generate and consume more than twice the amount of power the entire state uses — Kevin O'Leary's 9 Gigawatt Utah data center campus approved
The 40,000-acre project will run entirely off-grid using natural gas.
Tom's Hardware (www.tomshardware.com)
@quixoticgeek “2,000 permanent jobs in the county following construction”? Doing what, sweeping the halls?
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9GW datacentre approved. I'm trying to get my head round the scale of this. The whole of the UK uses about 40GW of electricity. So this one facility is a quarter of the UK grid. In one location. I had to look up box elder county on Wikipedia. "Its territory includes large tracts of barren desert,". Right, so a datacentre that uses the same amount of electricity as a quarter of the UK. In a fucking desert. And that's before we even consider the CO2 emissions. Yikes.
New AI data center in Utah will generate and consume more than twice the amount of power the entire state uses — Kevin O'Leary's 9 Gigawatt Utah data center campus approved
The 40,000-acre project will run entirely off-grid using natural gas.
Tom's Hardware (www.tomshardware.com)
@quixoticgeek At scale, such a powerful root infrastructure would require more than one source, like geothermal and wind, to justify such an amount. But placing a singular sourcing is an obvious liability with no backup/complimentary framework. It's like putting a large heavy water nuclear reactor in place, instead of smaller, overlapping modular Thorium, or Natrium reactors.
Simply just another #TechBros money-grab, at the taxpayer's expense.
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Based on an estimate of 500g CO2/kWh, the one facility would emit ~40MT of CO2 a year. If this one facility was a country, it would rank about 67th, just behind Bulgaria.
Concentrating this much energy use in a single location is going to change weather patterns. The environmental impact is just mind boggling.
The AI bubble can't burst soon enough.
@quixoticgeek Utah is already at the brink of collapse due to large farms with little to no environmental management, extremely poor water management, and the ever increasing air pollution in the Wasatch Valley where most of the people live. Add to that the ultra conservative majority that have been brainwashed by politicians and the mormon church, and you got a massive environmental desaster in the next 20 years.
