America’s largest power grid has struggled to cope with an onslaught of data centers. Now, after an auction to add more generation capacity failed, grid operator PJM Interconnection has said it will take data centers and other large users offline during power outages. The decision comes as the breakneck pace of data center construction has
This week a power line went down outside Washington, DC. Normally, the grid would only need a few seconds to recover from such an event. But this took more than 10 minutes because more than 3 gigawatts of data centers stopped consuming power almost simultaneously. The event caused voltage on PJM’s grid to spike from
OpenAI announced Wednesday that it will spend $750 billion on infrastructure through 2030, about 25% more than it estimated earlier this year, The Wall Street Journal reported. The renewed blitz comes as its Stargate data center project appears to have stalled. The first salvo in OpenAI’s spending spree will be a $20 billion data center
Data centers are expected to use one-fifth of the electricity generated in the US by 2035, four times more than today, according to a new report from BloombergNEF. The report predicts that an increase in AI computing will increase data center capacity to nearly 200 gigawatts over the next decade. Nearly half of that capacity
New York became the first state to halt data center construction after Governor Kathy Hochul today signed an executive order temporarily prohibiting the state from approving new permits for large projects. Hochul’s order applies to data centers of 50 megawatts or more, which could affect more than a dozen projects. The state Department of Environmental
Microsoft’s greenhouse gas pollution increased about 25 percent last year, the company says in its new sustainability report released Thursday. The report follows similar ones published by Google and Amazon last week. Together, they show a worrying trend of rising emissions from technology companies, driven by the global race to build energy-intensive data centers. In