AI Electricity Consumption: The rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cloud computing has increased electricity consumption. Now the use of AI tools like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Meta AI has become common everywhere. They are easy to use, but their AI servers use electricity to process the data. This need has now increased so much that soon one AI data center will consume as much electricity as the entire city.
These data centers not only host the servers needed to run software and applications, but their role has now become vital to the everyday tasks of businesses and consumers. Nowadays in every sector AI is being used, hence the scope of AI data centers for data processing will also increase.
The number of data centers has increased rapidly in the last 10 years. Earlier they used to work in small places, but now their size has become very big. AI and advanced technology have increased their needs. Gigawatt (1 billion watts) of electricity is required to run a data center. This amount of electricity is double the annual consumption of a city like Pittsburgh.
AI data centers will become so big that their electricity consumption can be as much as a big city. For example, a data center may consume 1 gigawatt of electricity, which is equivalent to the annual electricity consumption of approximately 7 lakh homes or 18 lakh people. Just as the need for electricity for AI is increasing, tech companies like Google, Facebook and Microsoft are also looking towards nuclear power.
At present, finding electricity and land for data centers has become a big challenge. Experts say that to power these big size data centers, 100 percent electricity is required continuously, which should continue 24 hours a day without any interruption throughout the year. Therefore, it is important that companies understand their electricity needs properly and find ways accordingly.
