'A Black Hole of Energy Use': Meta's Massive AI Data Center Is Stressing Out a Louisiana Community
'A Black Hole of Energy Use': Meta's Massive AI Data Center Is Stressing Out a Louisiana Community
Details about how Meta's nearly Manhattan-sized data center will impact consumers' power bills are still secret.
A massive data center for Meta’s AI will likely lead to rate hikes for Louisiana customers, but Meta wants to keep the details under wraps.
Holly Ridge is a rural community bisected by US Highway 80, gridded with farmland, with a big creek—it is literally named Big Creek—running through it. It is home to rice and grain mills and an elementary school and a few houses. Soon, it will also be home to Meta’s massive, 4 million square foot AI data center hosting thousands of perpetually humming servers that require billions of watts of energy to power. And that energy-guzzling infrastructure will be partially paid for by Louisiana residents.
The plan is part of what Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said would be “a defining year for AI.” On Threads, Zuckerberg boasted that his company was “building a 2GW+ datacenter that is so large it would cover a significant part of Manhattan,” posting a map of Manhattan along with the data center overlaid. Zuckerberg went on to say that over the coming years, AI “will drive our core products and business, unlock historic innovation, and extend American technology leadership. Let's go build! 💪”
once again billionaires get the 'volume' price break which poor people have to subsidize.
awesome.. 'progress'
I was just thinking electricity should be charged at reverse volume, the more you use, the more expensive each Gw is. It'll never happen, but if we wanted to tackle this issue, it's what we should do.
Sounds like tax brackets.
Data center riots when they cause a blackout during the summers 3rd heatwave?
The irony is that they often have backup diesel generators, so even if they cause a blackout they will still be able to service everyone's AI requests to do their homework for them
You mean three weeks into summer? We started our summer with a massive heatwave where I am.
Data center owners should work as aggressively as possible to build solar and wind capabilities. It would be best for all parties involved. They'd get cheaper energy and it would benefit everyone by not polluting as much.
Even if they cannot power all of their energy needs with renewables they could build some every year.
These companies are so rich they can easily afford it.
I have a personal conspiracy theory that part of the AI hype is pushed by dirty energy companies. Most American politicians say we can't remove dirty energy plants until we have enough clean energy to replace them. AI (and some other technologies) increase energy demand in a way that counters any clean energy production being built, such that the dirty energy production will always be needed unless we're willing to shut some things down.
Politicians say we can't scale down production below demand, so dirty energy companies benefit most from inflating demand instead of shutting down and being replaced with clean alternatives.
4,000,000 Square Feet = 37.161216 Hectares
4,000,000 Square Feet = 0.37161216 Square Kilometers