Data Centers Are Easy to Build. Powering Them Is Complicated, Slow, and Expensive
A new AI data center can be up and running in a year. Building new energy infrastructure to power it could take a decade.
On Wednesday, homes from Washington DC to Chicago experienced power fluctuations, attributed to a data center disconnecting from PJM, a vast power grid serving 13 states and 67 million customers. This incident highlights a significant challenge in building power infrastructure swiftly enough to meet the demands of AI data centers, and the consequences when issues arise will be felt by all.
AI necessitates colossal quantities of computer hardware for scaling, which is housed within data centers, each demanding enormous amounts of electricity. Consequently, the proliferation of data centers intensifies the strain on the grid, elevating energy costs for everyone. This predicament has fueled disdain for data centers and spurred resistance to their construction.
To circumvent grid demand issues, many data center builders have pledged to power the facilities independently. However, this approach faces a critical hurdle: constructing power plants and transmission lines to energize these warehouses will consume years and incur billions more than the data centers themselves. While a proficient and efficient constructor can erect a data center within a year, generating the requisite energy to support that data center's power requirements could take a decade.
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