Director Ayse Coskun Appears on PBS show “Energy Switch”
CISE Director and Professor Ayse Coskun (ECE, SE) recently appeared on an episode of PBS’s “Energy Switch”, a show that brings together experts on vital topics in energy and climate. The episode, called “Data Centers”, was moderated by Scott Tinker and also featured Josh Fluecke, who builds data centers for Syska Hennessy Group.
During the episode, they discuss how data centers, used for powering our online lives, also come with enormous electricity demands. Coskun and Fluecke discuss liquid cooling for data centers, data centers’ power usage and carbon footprint, and the possibility of restarting nuclear power plants for data centers. In particular, they discuss how the United States is the current leader in the number of data centers, with over half of the data centers in the world. According to Coskun, it is currently estimated that in the US, about 4% of electricity goes into data centers, and this number is expected to double in the next five years because of AI expansion.
Coskun also shared that she is working on designing new AI data centers in a way that recognizes power grids, which will be enabled by more efficiency, energy consideration, flexibility, and resilience of the power grid. To watch the episode, click here.