Two BU experts studying grid solutions and sustainable energy transitions say that tech companies racing to build more AI could make data centers more energy efficient
For over a decade, Ayse Coskun has studied the relationship between electric grids and data centers—the sprawling warehouses that house equipment necessary to maintain the internet and computing infrastructure. In years past, grid operators have been able to plan for and meet energy demands from data centers—but then artificial intelligence (AI) boomed.
“AI consumes a lot of energy,” says Coskun, a Boston University College of Engineering professor of electrical and computer engineering and systems engineering. It’s estimated that asking AI a question requires about 10 times the electricity of a traditional Google search. “But that’s just querying,” Coskun says. “People have now seen the success of these large language models that get trained with huge amounts of data. As a result, businesses want to build and train more of these models for specific applications.”
Building more data centers to operate AI is already increasing electricity usage: training AI large language models (LLMs) like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini requires thousands of computers in data centers running at full speed. According to a US Department of Energy report, data centers consumed 4 percent of total electricity in the US in 2023—more than a large US city—with that number expected to more than double by 2028.
With demand expected to rapidly peak, utilities across the country are actively trying to figure out where all of that power will come from; for the most part, that has meant relying on fossil fuels, like natural gas and coal plants. And this is all happening at a time when big tech companies acknowledge that they need to lower carbon emissions to help curb climate change.
“When you talk to utilities and power balancing authorities, they are concerned because there’s a demand for building new data centers, and the total amount of power [the centers] are demanding is unprecedented,” says Coskun, who also directs BU’s Center for Information & Systems Engineering and has published dozens of papers on energy-efficient and high-performance computing. “Suddenly, data centers may need 80 gigawatts of power in the next five years—when 1 gigawatt is roughly the amount that can be generated by a large nuclear power plant.”
Read the full story at BU’s The Brink
Smokestacks photo by Mike Marrah