Today the average data centre contains 2000 to 5000 servers. This requires a massive infrastructure to serve them: an uninterruptible power supply as back up, ventilation and cooling, along with fire suppression and all those connections to external networks.
They require optimum temperature and humidity conditions - around 20 odd degrees celcius (through cooling as thousands of servers get HOT) and no more than 40% humidity. And a lot of energy, somewhere in the 100MW range, similar to a small town!
Most are in North America, Europe and South and East Asia. They tend to be located just outside large urban centres, near enough to provide fast data to population hubs, but far enough away to take advantage of cheaper rural land prices.
Slough in Berkshire, which is just outside of the M25 has the honour of housing 34 data centres, Europe's largest collection...
These centres rent server space to whatever companies need them, for example 95% of 02's card purchase go through Slough based centres, for example!
Concerns
Data Centres have grown in scale massively in the last decades... with every new tech evolution we have required more and more server space: social media, online gaming, streaming TV, and now cloud computing and AI, all have led to more and more demand.
And these centres require natural resources. They are estimated to use 1 to 2% of the world's power - an estimated 460 Terawatt hours, set to double by 2026, only 2 years away.
Big Tech firms such as Google and Meta use similar amounts of power to small countries, and there is concern over how we are going to manage increasing energy demand.
Generative AI systems are the most energy intensive... every time an AI request is made it trawls info stored in these data centres.
I'm also struck by the security risk of companies holding a huge chunk of their operations in one centre. No doubt systems are backed up, but there is massive potential for a day or two of downtime if one of these centres is sabotaged.
Is it worth it...?
Well data is at the heart of so much of what we do, and 2 or even 3% of the world's energy supply doesn't sound too unreasonable as a chunk of the world's energy usage.
I get that AI has a lot of potential to make our lives easier, it can assist in so many jobs, cut down the time we all spend at work, maybe some of that additional energy use will be regained in journeys not being made to work as we move forwards.
However a lot of AI systems are going to be used to just get a tiny competitive edge in the search for profit, and be of use to those who seek to benefit and not necessarily most of the rest of us.
Final thoughts...
TBH I don't think data centres are anything to worry about, they may be doubling in size, but it's from a small base.
Something else worth considering is whether we could somehow use all of that heat being generated somehow...? Take a Permaculture approach to data centre development, if that's not an oxymoron.
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