The proliferation of information facilities aimed toward assembly the computing wants of AI might be unhealthy information for the US energy grid, in keeping with a brand new report in Bloomberg.
Utilizing the a million residential sensors tracked by Whisker Labs, together with market intelligence knowledge from DC Byte, Bloomberg discovered that greater than half of the houses displaying the worst power distortions reside inside 20 miles of great downtown exercise of information.
In different phrases, there seems to be a hyperlink between knowledge heart proximity and “unhealthy harmonics,” a time period for the non-ideal circulation {of electrical} energy into houses.
Bloomberg says this “distorted” power might finally destroy related home equipment, enhance vulnerability to electrical fires, and even trigger brownouts and blackouts. And AI knowledge facilities might be much more problematic as a consequence of their unstable energy necessities.
“No community is designed to have the ability to deal with that sort of load fluctuation not only for one knowledge heart however for a number of knowledge facilities on the identical time,” stated Bloom Power chief business officer Aman Joshi.
A spokesperson for Commonwealth Edison of Chicago instructed Bloomberg that the utility “strongly disputes the accuracy and underlying assumptions of Whisker Lab’s claims.”
