CoreWeave Data Center To Double City's Power Needs (yahoo.com)
- Reference: 0178378020
- News link: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/07/14/2337208/coreweave-data-center-to-double-citys-power-needs
- Source link: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/coreweave-data-center-double-city-120000770.html
> CoreWeave is expanding a data center that is [1]projected to double the electricity needs of a city near Dallas , another example of the strains that artificial intelligence workloads are [2]placing on the US power supply . Local officials have grappled with how to handle the increased stress on the electricity grid from the project, according to a late 2024 presentation and emails seen by Bloomberg. The site is being developed by Core Scientific and will be used by OpenAI in Denton, Texas. Last week, CoreWeave announced it would acquire Core Scientific for about $9 billion, in part, to gain direct control of its data centers aimed at supplying AI work.
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> Denton, about 50 miles northwest of Dallas, has almost doubled its population in the last 25 years to about 166,000 residents. To meet the spike in AI-related power demand, the city is passing on any extra costs to the data center operator and constructing additional grid infrastructure, Antonio Puente, general manager of local utility Denton Municipal Electric, said in an interview. "To serve the entire load from Core Scientific, we do have some transmission challenges," Puente said. "We will have to make some additional transmission investments." [...] Like some other large AI data center projects, the site in Denton was focused on cryptocurrency mining before pivoting to AI workloads in December. This transition means unrelenting power consumption -- the site will no longer curtail operations when power prices are high -- which will increase grid strain. "Now you're talking about a facility that has to have energy 24 hours a day, 365 days a year," Puente said. That challenge will be mitigated by the addition of backup generators and batteries, he added.
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> Unlike many large projects, the Denton data center didn't receive local tax exemptions. Officials expect more than $600 million in property and sales tax from the data center expansion, more than double the costs it plans to incur, according to an analysis document seen by Bloomberg. It also anticipates that 135 new jobs will be created, according to the document. The Denton site, which is already being rented by CoreWeave, is Core Scientific's largest planned project at about 390 megawatts of power. It's "utilizing the majority of extra system capacity" in the city, wrote a utility executive in a January email seen by Bloomberg. Any additional large power users will exacerbate overloads on the grid, the executive added.
"When fully built out, it will host one of the largest GPU clusters in North America," Core Scientific Chief Executive Officer Adam Sullivan said of the site during a May call. "Denton is a flagship facility."
The report notes that Texas could face electricity shortages as soon as 2026 due to surging power demand from data centers, oil and gas operations, and crypto mining.
[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/coreweave-data-center-double-city-120000770.html
[2] https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/07/09/235205/americas-largest-power-grid-is-struggling-to-meet-demand-from-ai
Mark my words (Score:4, Insightful)
Within the next few years you will start seeing Fringe YouTubers and Twitter users talking about how electricity and water aren't rights. That will gradually be brought into the mainstream because that's how they launder extremist ideas into the mainstream.
Within 10 years half the people on this forum who are still alive and who still have electricity and water will have come to believe that people aren't entitled to water and electricity.
We are rapidly becoming the kind of third world hell hole that so many people like to scorn.
Re: (Score:2)
It is hard to take your argument seriously when the second word you use is "snowflake".
And what will all this power produce? (Score:2)
A load of 2nd rate hallucinated slop to fool idiots into handing over their money. The hype is bad enough, but when it starts to impact on normal peoples lives for basic services its time for someone to call time on it.
Re: (Score:2)
> A load of 2nd rate hallucinated slop to fool idiots into handing over their money.
Gee - you say that as though it's a bad thing. /sarc
There's a reason I call broligarchs "the parasite class".
Make these companies pay (Score:4, Insightful)
What it is time for is to make these corporations pay for not just the power they draw, but also the increased infrastructure expenses that are being passed on to EVERYONE just so individual companies can make a profit. If an electric company needs to build new generators, pay for infrastructure/distribution upgrades, and all of that just for these companies that want to profit from AI, then these companies should pay for ALL of it, not just the power used.
Re: (Score:2)
> What it is time for is to make these corporations pay for not just the power they draw, but also the increased infrastructure expenses ...
... and the increased global warming, whose likely consequences include a higher cost of living, higher death rate, pandemics, waves of environmental refugees, and so on.
That's where the big-time expenses begin. And guess what - those expenses will also be "externalized" so that corporations and shareholders won't suffer financial losses.
Re: (Score:2)
You have gone off on a bit of a tangent to the issue. The power generation could come from solar or anything else, but it still comes down to, "if new power generation is needed to supply power to these devices, then those who draw the most power should be the ones to pay for the infrastructure and other higher costs. Basically, my bills shouldn't go up just because someone decides to start a power hungry business that doesn't benefit me or the rest of society.
Scale of META planned datacenter (Score:1)
[1]https://x.com/SawyerMerritt/st... [x.com]
We're building several multi-GW clusters. We're calling the first one Prometheus and it's coming online in '26. We're also building Hyperion, which will be able to scale up to 5GW over several years. We're building multiple more titan clusters as well. Just one of these covers a significant part of the footprint of Manhattan.
[1] https://x.com/SawyerMerritt/status/1944786808627192265
Why build in Dallas (Score:2)
They could significantly cut their power usage if they built in like northern Minnesota where they would have natural cooling much of the year and not need mechanical cooling year round like they would in Dallas.
Re: (Score:2)
You would think that a place like northern Minnesota would have a much lower risk of tropical storm damage.
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True, but AGW isn't only making every place and situation hotter, sometimes it's making them colder. What good is your data center when you cannot get power because the lines are down? Or when the big square building with the big flat roof gets buried under a metric fuckton of snow and the roof collapses?
Re: (Score:2)
And a much more stable electricity grid that is actually connected to resources in other states, and not run by idiots.
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I would wager the political environment is more friendly in Dallas.
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No natural disaster is. No snow storms. Lots of engineers and lots of infrastructure. And above all you couldn't care less about people dying in the heat or cold or not having water.