The advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) has led to novel innovations across industries, from healthcare to transportation to education and more. However, as AI advances it also demands more energy, increasing the strain on the electrical grid. Compared to a typical Google search, each ChatGPT search consumes approximately ten times more energy. CISE Director Ayşe Coşkun, Professor (ECE, SE) and Hariri Institute Faculty Affiliate, discussed this issue and innovative solutions at Sabanci University Istanbul International Center for Energy and Climate Change (IICEC), where she gave a seminar titled “Data Center-Grid Coordination for Sustainable Computing”. 

In her seminar, Coşkun emphasized the growing demand that AI is putting on the electric grid, noting that this problem will worsen as the technology develops to encompass new capabilities like voice and video generation. Coşkun explained that within the United States, a result of expanding AI capabilities, many power grid systems are getting close to capacity. Furthermore, balancing the ever-increasing demand for energy with global commitments to decarbonization creates a more complicated challenge. 

Within this environment, Coşkun highlighted the potential to utilize renewable energy sources, like wind and solar power, to alleviate energy demands while still pursuing decarbonization goals. Renewable power sources are not always available, posing a problem to the broader integration of sustainable energy. During her talk, Coşkun pin-pointed the significance of “flexible computing” which is a strategy involving adjusting the speed and capacity of data centers with the availability, cost, and environmental impacts of renewable energy sources. “Flexible computing” enables electrical grids to more efficiently address growing electricity demands and encompass sustainable energy in the power grid. 

Highlighting the improvements in hardware efficiency over the years, Coşkun also claimed that “data centers have reduced the amount of power spent on cooling by building more efficient liquid cooling systems. However, these efficiency gains alone are not enough to solve the sustainability problem. In fact, solving the energy efficiency problem is becoming more complex as the efficiency gains in chip technology slow down.”

Coşkun’s talk was widely attended by university and industry leaders, including Founding Chair of the Sabanci University Board of Trustees Güler Sabanci, Sabanci University President Prof. Yusuf Leblebici, Sabanci Holding CEO Cenk Alper. 

More information on the seminar can be found here
Watch the webinar broadcast in English here