GW is already a measure of rate of energy use. You can talk about GWh per day (which is really just another way of saying 0.041 GW), but GW per day is only sensible in the context of a ramp in power consumption.
Assuming the original source of that number didn't incorrectly conflate GWh into GW, that puts your comparison as underestimating the energy usage 24-fold.
I've heard 5GW touted as the capacity (so like 120GWH per day if flat loaded at 100%). However that is clearly B.S as I've also heard 2GW and another much more sensible number
Just to give perspective 5GW would power about 10 Million H100s or about 5 million G200. Completely farcical, won't happen.
There's a 7-million-sqft data center near Reno that claims 650MW capacity. Zuck says his will be 4 million sqft. So that doesn't really get us to 5GW unless we're going vertical.
> Yet increasing the power consumption of an area by 25X over a few years requires a significant amount of transmission and distribution infrastructure upgrades to make that happen
Not if you put your data-center right next to the power station.
rcxdude|5 months ago
GW is already a measure of rate of energy use. You can talk about GWh per day (which is really just another way of saying 0.041 GW), but GW per day is only sensible in the context of a ramp in power consumption.
Assuming the original source of that number didn't incorrectly conflate GWh into GW, that puts your comparison as underestimating the energy usage 24-fold.
matt-p|5 months ago
Just to give perspective 5GW would power about 10 Million H100s or about 5 million G200. Completely farcical, won't happen.
unknown|5 months ago
[deleted]
jeffbee|5 months ago
There's a 7-million-sqft data center near Reno that claims 650MW capacity. Zuck says his will be 4 million sqft. So that doesn't really get us to 5GW unless we're going vertical.
dist-epoch|5 months ago
Not if you put your data-center right next to the power station.
ben_w|5 months ago
Watts are Joules per second, you'd only measure "watts per day" as a rate of change of power supply, not absolute power supply.
Also, 5GW / 170000 homes ≈ 29kW/home, even the USA isn't that heavily supplied with electricity.
(My home in Germany is very efficient, 0.5 kW average, including heating and cooling as well as all devices).