Electricity supply is becoming the latest choke point threatening the growth of artificial intelligence, according to top tech industry chiefs, as power-hungry data centers add to the pressure on networks around the world.
Billionaire Elon Musk said this month that while AI development had been “limited by chips” last year, the final bottleneck to cutting-edge technology was “electricity supply” . The comments followed a warning from Amazon chief Andy Jassy that there was “not enough energy right now” to run new generative AI services.
Amazon, Microsoft and Google parent Alphabet are investing billions of dollars in IT infrastructure as they seek to expand their AI capabilities, including in data centers that typically take several months to plan and build. years.
But some of the most popular locations for building facilities, such as northern Virginia, face capacity constraints that, in turn, lead to the search for suitable sites in growing global markets for facility construction. data.
“The demand for data centers has always been there, but it has never been stronger,” said Pankaj Sharma, executive vice president of Schneider Electric’s data center business.
Right now, “we probably don’t have enough available capacity” to operate all the facilities that will be needed globally by 2030, said Sharma, whose unit works with the manufacturer of Nvidia chips to design centers optimized for AI workloads.
“One of the limits of deployment [chips] in the new AI economy. . . where do we build the data centers and how do we get the power,” said Daniel Golding, chief technology officer at Appleby Strategy Group and former head of data centers at Google. “At some point, the reality [electricity] the network will obstruct AI.
The issue of electricity supply has also fueled concerns about the environmental impact of the latest tech boom.
Countries around the world must meet their renewable energy commitments and electrify sectors such as transport in response to accelerating climate change. To support these changes, many countries will need to reform their electricity networks, according to analysts.
The power grid requirements are a “priority” for Amazon, the company’s head of sustainability Kara Hurst said, adding that she was “in regular conversations” with U.S. officials on the issue.
Data centers – industrial buildings, often covering large areas, that house the physical components that underpin computer systems, such as cabling, chips and servers – are part of the backbone of computing .
Research group Dgtl Infra has estimated that global capital spending on data centers will exceed $225 billion in 2024. Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang said this year there will be a need to build data centers worth $1 billion over the next few years to support generative AI, which is energy-intensive and involves processing huge volumes of information.
Such growth would require enormous amounts of electricity, even if systems became more efficient. According to the International Energy Agency, global data center power consumption will more than double by 2026 to more than 1,000 terawatt hours, an amount roughly equivalent to the annual consumption of the Japan.
“Updated regulations and technological improvements, particularly in efficiency, will be crucial to moderating the increase in data center energy consumption,” the IEA said this year.
US data center power consumption is expected to increase from 4% to 6% of total demand by 2026, while the AI industry is expected to grow “exponentially” and consume at least 10 times its electricity demand. 2023 by 2026, the IEA said.
Even before the generative AI boom, some major markets were struggling to meet demand. It can take years for new renewable energy projects, such as wind farms, to gain regulatory approval and be connected to the grid. It is also necessary, in some regions, to build new electricity transmission lines from one point to another.
In northern Virginia, the world’s largest data center hub, electricity provider Dominion Energy has suspended new data center connections in 2022 while it analyzes how to cope with the increase in demand, in particular by modernizing certain parts of its network.
In October, the company said in filings with a Virginia regulator that it was experiencing “significant load growth due to data center development” and that growing energy demand posed a “challenge “.
In response to this demand, authorities in countries including Ireland and the Netherlands have sought to limit the development of new data centers, while Singapore recently lifted a moratorium.
Developers are looking to build sites in growing areas such as the US states of Ohio and Texas, parts of Italy and Eastern Europe, Malaysia and India, analysts say.
Finding suitable sites can be difficult, with power supply being just one factor to consider, such as the availability of large volumes of water to cool data centers.
“For every 50 sites I look at, maybe two get to the point where they can be developed,” said Golding of Appleby Strategy. “People are sifting through a lot of properties.”
These concerns have sparked interest among data center developers in options such as on-site power generation and nuclear power, with Microsoft this year hiring a director of “accelerating nuclear development.”
