4 ms·

I guess power grids have never grown when demand increased.

bayindirh 2y ago
It's not easy to scale power grids like computing racks. We have moved our data center recently, and it's a multi-megawatt one. Finding a location where power is available or made available was a major challenge and reduced our choices dramatically. At the end, multiple transformers, a couple distribution points and tons of power cables had to be changed/relaid or upgraded. The power budget planning for the region we're in have changed and this took close to a year, alone.
Jensson 2y ago
Human power use has remained pretty constant in the past 60 years, at least if you just count the west. It was exponentially growing before then, which is why people had so crazy ideas about the future since they were used to exponential power growth and assume that would just continue. So point is that no power grid hasn't grown as demand increased, rather we tempered demand to match that the grid didn't grow. You even see it today with power shut downs etc rather than increasing grids.
- bayindirh 2y ago
  Even if our demand increased in terms of output, we curbed the demand in terms of input by increasing efficiency. My whole house's lighting requires less power when compared to two rooms' lighting power requirement 20 years ago.
  - Jensson 2y ago
    That happened since we couldn't make more power so only way left was to increase efficiency. Power used to be like how we see compute today, exponentially increasing so everyone wasted with it since you soon had more than enough. But once that stopped power efficiency suddenly became very important.
luma 2y ago
The problem with adding capacity is that the licensing and construction of baseload GW-scale generation takes around a decade in most of the US. Several hyperscalers have talked directly about this problem, you can throw an extra $B at NVIDIA and get yourself moved up the list for some new GPU but no amount of money will make an environmental impact assessment go any faster. Power availability is, by far, the greatest limiting factor in modern datacenter site selection.
wcoenen 2y ago
Electricity demand has been flat or growing very slowly for the last 20 years, in spite of population growth, because efficiency increased over the same period. It's only recently that things like electric vehicles and AI have restarted a growth trend in electricity demand. As a result regulators, utilities and power companies may all have gotten a bit rusty when it comes to rapid growth. But yes, they will relearn.
everdrive 2y ago
Well when the need is this valid, it's hard not to argue for growth. We need AI so we can hire fewer workers, and the workers who remain can deal with another layer of abstraction. We also need AI so that we can drive more engagement on social media platforms, which at least currently seem to be struggling a bit. Nothing will reinvigorate them more than a stream of fantastical content which ultimately carries no meaning. We could use AI to segment people even further: an individual meme could be microtargeted and modified at the individual level. Everyone could get their own jokes, opinions, and ideas, nigh-individualized and wholly unrelatable! The idea that mere power generation is holding up this clear advance in technology is baffling. We've got to build whatever it takes, just so long as this AI revolution isn't allowed to flounder.
- silverquiet 2y ago
  And given how important all of the above is, we need to add more carbon to the atmosphere to accomplish it.

It's not easy to scale power grids like computing racks. We have moved our data center recently, and it's a multi-megawatt one. Finding a location where power is available or made available was a major challenge and reduced our choices dramatically. At the end, multiple transformers, a couple distribution points and tons of power cables had to be changed/relaid or upgraded. The power budget planning for the region we're in have changed and this took close to a year, alone.

Jensson 2y ago

Human power use has remained pretty constant in the past 60 years, at least if you just count the west. It was exponentially growing before then, which is why people had so crazy ideas about the future since they were used to exponential power growth and assume that would just continue. So point is that no power grid hasn't grown as demand increased, rather we tempered demand to match that the grid didn't grow. You even see it today with power shut downs etc rather than increasing grids.

bayindirh 2y ago
Even if our demand increased in terms of output, we curbed the demand in terms of input by increasing efficiency. My whole house's lighting requires less power when compared to two rooms' lighting power requirement 20 years ago.
- Jensson 2y ago
  That happened since we couldn't make more power so only way left was to increase efficiency. Power used to be like how we see compute today, exponentially increasing so everyone wasted with it since you soon had more than enough. But once that stopped power efficiency suddenly became very important.

luma 2y ago

The problem with adding capacity is that the licensing and construction of baseload GW-scale generation takes around a decade in most of the US. Several hyperscalers have talked directly about this problem, you can throw an extra $B at NVIDIA and get yourself moved up the list for some new GPU but no amount of money will make an environmental impact assessment go any faster. Power availability is, by far, the greatest limiting factor in modern datacenter site selection.

wcoenen 2y ago

Electricity demand has been flat or growing very slowly for the last 20 years, in spite of population growth, because efficiency increased over the same period. It's only recently that things like electric vehicles and AI have restarted a growth trend in electricity demand. As a result regulators, utilities and power companies may all have gotten a bit rusty when it comes to rapid growth. But yes, they will relearn.

everdrive 2y ago

Well when the need is this valid, it's hard not to argue for growth. We need AI so we can hire fewer workers, and the workers who remain can deal with another layer of abstraction. We also need AI so that we can drive more engagement on social media platforms, which at least currently seem to be struggling a bit. Nothing will reinvigorate them more than a stream of fantastical content which ultimately carries no meaning. We could use AI to segment people even further: an individual meme could be microtargeted and modified at the individual level. Everyone could get their own jokes, opinions, and ideas, nigh-individualized and wholly unrelatable! The idea that mere power generation is holding up this clear advance in technology is baffling. We've got to build whatever it takes, just so long as this AI revolution isn't allowed to flounder.

silverquiet 2y ago
And given how important all of the above is, we need to add more carbon to the atmosphere to accomplish it.