Almost half of all major US data centres are located in one region: Northern Virginia. This presents a unique research opportunity to test how the computing industry impacts regional electricity markets. My thesis presents one of the first findings on this topic.'
Key findings include:
- Consumption impact: The US electricity consumption has been stable (and boring!) for the last 30 years. Data Centres play a major role in shifting the existing consumption patterns. In Virginia they consume around 25% of the state's total electricity,
- Price Spillover: Virginia’s data centres exercise immense price pressure on surrounding electricity markets. Residential, commercial and industrial power consumers already experience consequences of the “We Need More Compute” trend shortly,
- AI is not that important: The research reveals the power consumption trend from data centres started much earlier than 2022. LLMs and "AI" have orders of magnitude higher Power per Compute costs, but they are an addition to baseline consumption.
Access the Essay via: