OpenAI wants 5 gigawatt centers: as much energy as Miami

AI requires a lot of energy to function at full capacity, and that’s what Sam Altman knows very well. That’s why OpenAI is thinking about building centers with a capacity of 5 gigawatts to support its work.

What is a gigawatt? This is a key concept in the energy sector as it helps estimate the power of electrical infrastructure and the potential of renewable energy sources. A gigawatt (GW) This power measurement unit which is equivalent billion watt (W). This is why this large unit is used to express the power generation capacity of power plants or the amount of energy consumed by a large population.

OpenAI wants the US government to help speed up the construction of huge data centers that will consume as much energy as large American cities. In fact, Altman and a number of other major AI players held an infrastructure meeting at the White House. The Biden administration subsequently announced a coordinated, government-wide effort to accelerate the construction of new artificial intelligence data centers “consistent with economic, national and environmental goals.”

Altman wants to build 5 gigawatt centers: that’s the power of about five nuclear reactors, the kind of power needed for a large city like Miami. This is up to 100 times greater than the requirements of a typical large data center.

Alex De Vries, founder of energy technology research firm Digiconomist, said the seven 5GW units would “use twice as much energy as New York State combined.”

“That’s a huge amount, and in terms of global electricity, at this point you’re talking about more than 1% of global electricity consumption just for these data centers,” he said.

According to TimeEach of these futuristic data centers will cost around $100 billion and contain 2 million artificial intelligence chips, which is where that 5 GW of energy is needed.