CIO OPINION
Medium to long term plans for data centre administrators supporting Generative AI workloads
• Evaluate the impact of potential power shortages on products and services by developing scenarios that reflect limitations on available power .
• Include significant cost increases for data centre services when developing plans for new products and services .
• Look for alternative approaches that require less power while achieving the same market impact .
• Reevaluate sustainability goals for CO 2 production in light of anticipated increases in the use of fossil-fuelbased power generation .
• Determine the risks and impact potential power shortages will have on all products and services , current and planned , by evaluating the likelihood that they will require new data centre construction to be successful .
• Develop workaround solutions for power shortages , outages by identifying major risk points and potential alternatives .
• Diversify to geographic regions with sufficient power to ensure that products and services will not be affected by power shortages .
• Negotiate long-term contracts for data centre services at reasonable rates for power .
• Conduct a cost-benefit analysis of planned expansions of products and services in light of projected data centre costs .
• Consider moving some products and services to regional data centres in areas with more predictable power costs .
• Reevaluate sustainability goals relating to CO 2 emissions in light of future data centre requirements .
• Work with data centre providers and power utilities to evaluate the emissions potential for data centre alternatives .
• Develop Generative AI applications with a focus on using a minimum amount of computing power .
• Look at the power , and emissions implications of options such as edge computing and smaller language models .
• Support initiatives to promote development and implementation of green power alternatives such as nuclear , green hydrogen , fusion , geothermal .
• Reevaluate sustainability goals relating to CO 2 emissions in light of future data centre requirements and data centre power sources .
new data centres is forcing public utility power suppliers to increase their production by any means possible .
In some cases , this means keeping fossil fuel plants that had been scheduled for retirement operating beyond their scheduled shutdown . control , wind and sunshine and can only be depended upon to produce a fraction of their total rated power over an extended period of time .
The capacity utilization factor , CUF is a number derived by taking the actual power produced by
Other examples include running additional long distance power lines to existing fossil fuel plants or keeping such plants already connected to the grid running longer . While many of these strategies are successful in providing needed power to new data centres , an undesirable side effect is an increase in the carbon footprint .
While renewable power , wind and solar is capturing an increasing percentage of total generating capacity , these sources are not suitable as a primary source of data centre power without some form of reliable , 24x7 backup . The difficulty with renewable power is that both wind and solar depend on factors they cannot
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