AI eats energy for breakfast.
By Jo Nova
If the grid breaks, remember it’s all AI’s fault!
New data centers in Australia may use as much as 6% of the electricity demand by 2030. (That’s a whole six percent increase in demand four years from now. Call the ambulance, eh!).
But the thing is, our fragile grid already has these odd jiggly voltage and frequency spikes now that we’ve blown up all the spare coal plants, and any one of these jiggles may trigger a cluster of data centers to trip out at the same time to protect themselves. If a large load disappears off the grid simultaneously, it could set off a cascading chain of failures causing a widespread blackout. (A bit like the wind farms did in the Great South Australian Blackout of 2016).
So the manager of our forced fantasy transition is lining up the excuses to cover for his own failures. If there’s a blackout, it’s AI’s fault he says. And if prices rise, it’s AI’s fault too claims Minister Chris Bowen — who says that “Wholesale electricity prices could jump by a quarter in NSW and Victoria if data-centre growth is not matched by new renewable generation and storage…“.(Unlike the 50 years before that where demand grew and prices fell because we just built more coal power).
Then there’s the extortion. If AI want to do business here, they have to install renewables to “strengthen (meaning, weaken) the grid” says Mr Bowen.
Why don’t we just let the AI centers choose the generator themselves Minister, like there was a free market? Is it because we all know they’d build gas or coal plants?
The sad story is his new Capacity Investment Scheme is failing to win over investors, so Chris Bowen has to force the new customers to buy his pet generators, to help him pretend to meet the targets we have no chance of reaching.
Australia’s AI boom fuels data centre threat to national electricity grid
By Perry Williams, The Australian
Australia’s $135bn data-centre industry poses a new risk to the nation’s electricity system, authorities have warned, with sudden dips in voltage potentially causing a mass grid-scale shock and threatening power connections between states.
Energy Minister Chris Bowen has warned that data centres must “do their bit to strengthen” the energy grid, asserting that operators will be required to underwrite new renewable power and fund their own connectivity so the massive spike in energy demand does not become a strain on consumers.
But the grid operator found that by 2030 a single fault near western Sydney could knock out about 1500 megawatts of data-centre power in milliseconds. It cautioned that data centres clustered around Sydney and Melbourne could disconnect across multiple locations as a result of an ordinary voltage dip, raising a new risk for the operation of the grid.
And the lie perpetuates.
Data centre giant Airtrunk estimates that, for every additional gigawatt of data centre demand, Australia will likely need around 3 to 4 gigawatts of new renewable generation capacity to support 24/7 operations.
It doesn’t matter how many renewables anyone installs, it will never support 24/7 electricity without a monster load of storage.
*PS: The internet is out here. I thought I could not write but I managed to rig up a drip feed miracle through a phone, “yay”.