Comment by cogman10
2 hours ago
Did your datacenter consume 9GW?
I get it, a lot of the older data centers consumed relatively little power. More than nothing but manageable like 1 or 2MW.
The reason for the "craze" is that the AI datacenters being built are monstrosities that consume way more power, an order of magnitude or more. And a lot of them are going up.
>However, using a computer cursor to highlight the redacted text box in the report to DWEE, then copying and pasting it into a separate document reveals that Agate LLC is reporting 52.65 megawatts of electricity during peak electrical demand and 13.299 megagallons of water between cooling towers, evaporative systems and site operations in the last year. That totals out to 13 million gallons of water.
The data center discussed in the article allegedly consumed 53 MW peak and 13 megagallons of water over a year.
> Did your datacenter consume 9GW?
I think the largest data centers consume about 1 GW.
https://www.enconnex.com/data-center-energy-consumption-and-...
https://techplustrends.com/1gw-data-center-power-consumption...
> I think the largest data centers consume about 1 GW.
The largest AI datacenters. And there are multiple planned that consume beyond 1 GW. In particular, I'm referring to the box elder county data center which I believe is one of the largest planned. [1]
Prior to these AI datacenters, 100MW would have been considered an extremely large amount of power for a single datacenter.
But also, 1GW is a huge amount of power. More than a lot of states use, and not the really small ones like Wyoming. Just for reference, steel mills use 40MW and there's about 8 of them in the US.
1GW is an absurd amount of power to consume.
[1] https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/kevin-o-learys-9-...
> But also, 1GW is a huge amount of power. More than a lot of states use
Not even close to a true statement.
EIA says that the lowest electricity use by state in 2024 was Vermont, at 5.5B kwh. That’s about 0.6GW, if you assume continuous uniform use. By the time you get to #48 (Hawaii) you’re over the 1GW mark [1].
According to the EIA, US utility-scale generation capacity in 2025 was 1.3 million megawatts [2], so assuming that these new 1GW datacenters were on the public grid, they would each consume about 1/1300th of the 2025 supply. Not nothing, but not nearly the dramatic impact that you’re suggesting.
For perspective, the Grand Coulee Dam has a generating capacity of about 7,000MW. Robert Moses dam in Niagara Falls does about 2,700MW.
[1] https://www.eia.gov/state/seds/data.php?incfile=/state/seds/...
[2] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-...
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> 1GW of power datacenters, more efficient GPUs, more efficient training, Xiaomi/Deepseek disk based caching + other efficiency gains.
I haven't done the math but if I see how many tokens I can burn per month for 100 USD it's pretty mind boggling to imagine how much capacity is being added by this build out.
This is not the place to discuss it but even in my wildest predictions I find it hard to imagine that we're really going to need all this capacity anytime soon (although I guess anything spare can go into training).
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If we printed electricity like China, this would not be an issue, we can have more electricity at lower prices when we're ready
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2026/09/03/chinas-solar-capacity...
There were certainly 1GW DCs in the US 10+ years ago.
Do you have any in mind? How many?
Given the current power consumption of states, I find it hard to believe.
I remember one in the Midwest was growing past that.
Even for smaller sites, 1-2 MW would have been very small.