Data Centers Keep Coal Power Plants Online, Big Tech Goes Nuclear

An article from Power Magazine discusses the huge consumption of electricity from data centers, and how coal power plants are being kept online longer than projected in order to keep the data centers operational.

https://www.powermag.com/power-demand-from-data-centers-keeping-coal-fired-plants-online

“Bloomberg Intelligence recently said its research shows data centers, buildings filled with servers and other computing equipment for data storage and networking that supports operations and artificial intelligence (AI), could be responsible for as much as 17% of all U.S. electricity consumption by 2030. The U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE) has said one data center can require 50 times the electricity of a typical office building.”

This week, both Google and Amazon announced that they had entered into deals with companies that develop small nuclear reactors. And Microsoft made a deal last month with Constellation Energy to restart the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania in order to generate electricity to power its data centers. (More information here.)

Data centers are basically essential nowadays for the running of today’s civilization and economy. There are very few areas of life that are not dependent in one way or another on the processing power of data centers, and of course they need lots of electricity to run.

It might be a smart move for some tech companies to reach out to Leonardo Corporation to see if they can work out agreements to use E-Cat Power for powering their data centers. The major tech companies probably won’t want to take such a risk, but I think there are smaller operators out there who might be intrigued enough to see if they can work something out. If the E-Cat is up to the task, it would be simpler and less expensive and time consuming than building nuclear plants.