AI Knowledge Facilities: Trendy Day Vampires For Which We Are Anticipated To Sacrifice – The Washington Commonplace
There is not one individual who hasn’t heard mythical stories about “blood sucking” demons called vampires. Movies have been made about these myths – Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Van Helsing, Love at First Bite, The Vampire Diaries, Interview with the Vampire, and The Librarians: Curse of the Judas Chalice, to name a few. While these are stories based on myth and legend of Vlad the Impaler, there are vampires, which aren’t myth or legend, that exist today. They aren’t the “blood sucking” kind. These vampires suck energy and water. You know these vampires as AI Data Centers.
According to utilitydive.com, the soaring demand for energy by hyperscalers (tech companies building AI data centers) has shattered two decades of “relatively flat electricity use”. This year alone utility companies have requested $29 billion in rate increases, which is harming households throughout the united States. The electricity demand for the US has been projected to grow by 128 GW by 2029, of which 93 GW is to support AI data centers.
So, almost 75% of the energy needed by 2029 will be for the energy sucking vampires – AI data centers.
State officials and utilities feel they have to choose between attracting prospective AI business and enduring long interconnection waiting periods and a volatile national landscape for renewables. Many are opting to resurrect coal plants that had been planned for retirement, or greenlight construction on new gas-fired power plants. And many decision makers view increasingly electric households as passive energy consumers that are in direct competition for a limited power supply.
If you haven’t heard, Three Mile Island is being reopened to serve Microsoft, with a projected timeline of 2027 – 2028, and will be renamed the Crane Clean Energy Center. Afterall, the name of Three Mile Island conjures up memories of a nuclear accident.
With the rapidity with which AI data centers are trying to operate, hyperscalers cannot wait almost a decade for new gas-fired power plants to be built or coal-fired power plants to be restarted. Therefore, there had to be a solution for these energy sucking vampires to have energy to operate without the wait.
There is actually a near-term solution that won’t require forgoing climate pledges or waiting years for new power plants: Data center operators should pay for residential upgrades to heat pumps, rooftop solar and storage — to secure the power they need right now, and establish the grid stability we all need for the future.
It’s time to recognize that households — far from being passive energy consumers — are the foundation of our energy infrastructure, and the hero of our energy story.
Just gag me with a spoon, will ya? BARF!!
Just to be clear, the “solution” from a report by Rewiring America is for hyperscalers to pay for “upgrades” to residential households by paying for installation and costs of heat pumps, solar panels and batteries.
But, it doesn’t stop there as a report from AnnDyl indicated. AnnDyl is “your one-stop policy, advocacy, and business development shop working at the state, national, and international levels.”
The report “modeled” (think clinical trial) grid impacts of a “200 MW AI data center the benefits of partially offsetting its load through residential efficiency investments that reduce load elsewhere on the system.”
Rinaldi and Presley found the most cost-effective set of upgrades to be a package of insulation, air and duct sealing, and smart thermostat upgrades to homes near the data center. In addition to offsetting 10% of the data center’s peak load, that package would produce about $3 million in annual customer savings and create more than 200 jobs.
The analysis considered other scenarios, including deployments of only smart thermostats, cold climate heat pumps paired with smart thermostats, and grid-interactive heat pump water heaters. Those fell short for various reasons. For example, the authors said deploying cold climate heat pumps for space heating without corresponding insulation upgrades could negatively impact the grid — though combining the two could have significant cost and environmental benefits.
The AnnDyl analysis stressed that a $50 million investment could not by itself offset the full load of a 200-MW data center.
This is where the previous solution from Rewiring America comes in.
Rewiring America’s more expansive Homegrown Energy report found tech companies could offset about one-third of their expected capacity needs over the next five years by subsidizing heat pumps for space and water heating in households that currently use less efficient electric systems and “more than meet their total planned capacity needs” by paying for battery storage and rooftop solar in homes suited for it.
That level of investment would involve millions of heat pumps, batteries and solar systems installed across the United States. In a follow-up report, Rewiring America said it would create 5.5 million new jobs by 2030.
Multiple hyperscalers are excited about this solution. You can bet they are! According to Wael Kanj, at Rewiring America, “[W]hat we’ve heard consistently is that hyperscalers are excited by solutions that don’t just meet their load requirements but also deliver visible benefits to the communities hosting them.” Kanj also indicated that hyperscalers “were intrigued by investments that could build public trust among data center neighbors.”
Funny, no one mentioned what “visible benefit” is to be had by the community for putting eye-sore solar panels and batteries on their roofs to accommodate AI data centers. Moreover, what community benefit does an AI data center bring? Those “smart thermostats” mentioned will probably have to be connected to the utility companies that can cut your heat or air conditioning off during peak load times. How big of a battery is going to be needed to run the entire household for days when the sun don’t shine? What kind of an eyesore will that be? Surely those size batteries wouldn’t fit on a roof.
So, the hyperscalers want American households to rely on unreliable “solar” while they suck up the power already slotted for our households to meet their requirements. At this point, the claim is the alternatives mentioned would only be used during peak demand. Sure. Anyone want to believe that? Vampires!
Vampires are like Lays potato chip lovers – they can’t bite just once. And, they bite using deception.
In the immediate term, we found that hyperscalers can add roughly 30 GW of capacity nationwide — or one-third of their projected capacity needs through 2029 — by putting heat pumps into households that currently use inefficient electric heating, cooling or water heating.
In Pennsylvania, the figure is even higher. We found that 45% of the state’s projected new data center demand, or 1.3 GW, could come from upgrading inefficient electric heating systems to heat pumps.
This is a cost-competitive option. We calculated that if hyperscalers covered half the upfront installation price of 6.5 million households with electric resistance heating to heat pumps, they could secure grid capacity at a price of roughly $344/kW-year. That’s on par with the cost of building a new gas plant, currently about $315/kW-year. [Emphasis mine]
Who covers the cost of the appliance and the other half of the installation costs? That would be the household getting the upgrade. So, the “plan” is for Americans to incur costs to supply the energy vampires with electricity. Then, Americans get to pay again for the cost of new power plants through increasing rates.
Here is what is being disseminated to the public.
There are significant immediate benefits for households. Energy bills would drop by an average of $740 per year. Reduced outdoor air pollution resulting from the upgrades would lead to $2.3 billion in health benefits, based on our past modeling of health outcomes from electrification. And by pairing these investments with negotiated discounts or standardized installs that achieve economies of scale, hyperscalers would create a virtuous feedback cycle that further lowers upfront costs for households and makes existing state and local incentives more efficient and effective.
We found that if hyperscalers invested in a home battery for all single-family homes and a 5-kW solar panel system for those with a suitable roof — modest, by residential installation averages — they could collectively generate 109 GW of increased capacity on the grid. That’s more than the 93 GW that data centers are projected to need. And with installations at that scale, paired with targeted interventions such as streamlining the permitting process, hyperscalers could secure this capacity at costs comparable to building a gas power plant.
It is claimed that Texas could unlock 13.9 GW of the 17 GW needed for AI vampires, I mean data centers, through solar, storage and upgrading inefficient central AC systems to heat pumps. Georgia could unlock 6.9 GW by doing the same, which is projected to be 100% of the capacity needed by data centers. Pennsylvania could gain the most by unlocking 4.5 GW which is 150% of the capacity needed.
But, who gets to pay for air sealing, duct insulation, heat pump space heaters, heat pump water heaters and insulation – installation as well as materials and appliances? That would be we, the American public. How many Americans could afford to pay half of installation plus the cost of a heat pump, much less pay the full amount for other appliances plus installation? What if you are happy with what you have? How many households will it require to meet the demand?
And, once they convince, I mean bribe, the gullible to do all of this, does anyone think any new power plants will be built (gas, coal, oil or nuclear) to get everyone off the “green” grid? Of course not! This is a covert way to deceive the gullible to go green for AI data centers.
Why don’t the AI data centers do solar panels and batteries? Didn’t an analysis by AnnDyl indicate that even funding American households to do all this to the tune of $50 million would not offset a 200 MW AI data center?
Remember who these “hyperscalers” are – Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, Meta, Google, etc. The same corporations who censored those telling the truth and who are still censoring truth tellers today. Microsoft’s Bill Gates infamously stated, “Now the world today has 6.8 Billion people that’s heading up to about 9 Billion. Now if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services we could lower that by perhaps 10 or 15%.”
Wonder why no one has thought of having the hyperscalers pay for the new power plants and infrastructure needed to power them? Their AI data centers are what is sucking energy from the utility infrastructure as power needs in the US since electricity usage for two decades has been “relatively flat”. Why should the American public pay one dime for the infrastructure needed to power these AI data centers that will be used to construct a digital prison for us all and provide mechanisms for increased surveillance of everyone?
The solution being proposed is a win for the AI data center and a loss for the people. They may call it a win-win, but it isn’t. The non-solution favors the AI data center at the expense of the people in the area that it is located.
While this proposed “solution” only covers the problem of power, what about the problem of water? Not only do these AI data centers suck up energy, they suck up millions of gallons of water in a community, meaning they are also water vampires. So far, no solution to offset the extreme water usage has been discovered. Wonder if water rationing for communities will be proposed to feed the water vampires as they disguise the rationing with flowers, unicorns, and rainbows for palatability?
There has yet to be any discussion on environmental “benefits”. Personally, I can’t see any.
At this point, the people in the areas where AI data centers are proposed should ban together and nix their development. There is no garlic to protect against these energy and water vampires once in your community and there is no wooden stake made from an Aspen tree that can be driven through the heart (it has no heart). Once that AI energy and water vampire data center is there, it will take a monumental effort to get it out – if it’s possible at all. The only entities needing more computing power than anyone in any household is AI energy and water vampire data centers.
Resources:
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/home-efficiency-data-center-loads/808572/
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/household-electrification-demand-data-center/760817/
Article posted with permission from Sons of Liberty Media