CIO OPINION
Total ICT electricity demands will exceed 9 % of total global energy production by 2030 , up from less than 3 % today .
Power shortages will soon limit growth of Generative AI
Generative AI ’ s demand for computing power will be limited by the inability of power utilities to expand their generation capacity fast enough and data centre administrators must include power supply limitations into expansion , pricing models and workload planning says Bob Johnson at Gartner .
The explosive growth of new hyperscale data centres to implement Generative AI is creating an insatiable demand for power that will exceed the power utilities ’ ability to provide it . New , bigger data centres are being planned to handle the huge amounts of data needed to train and implement the continuously expanding large language models that underpin popular Generative AI applications . Data centre managers are realizing that there will not be enough power available to implement their most ambitious plans .
This problem is exacerbated by regional concentrations of data centres , which can consume a major percentage of the local power utility ’ s total production . Such concentrations benefit from wellestablished communication infrastructure , but can also threaten to overwhelm the power utility ’ s future capacity with expansion plans .
The situation is serious enough that some locations , such as Ireland and Singapore , are either severely limiting or completely stopping data centre growth out of power concerns .
Cost of power
The inevitable result of impending power shortages is an increase in the price of power , which will also increase the costs of operating Generative AI ’ s large language models . Data centre operators can expect major cost increases as the largest data centre operators compete financially for scarce power resources .
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