Why the Internet Is Running Out of Electricity

As users and companies demand more and more processing power and storage to fuel an ever-more complex internet, it’s overwhelming existing data centers. This is an inside look at the challenges, stakes, and colossal sums of money involved in the data center industry.

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[rcoder]

Nuclear. The answer is nuclear energy. Data centers are the most reliable, predictable energy loads in the world. Nuclear fits this power profile perfectly.

[berniemacs]

Lived next door to one and this one security man got on me for walking my dog along the fence line of our apartment. Not my fault it’s the only grass we have for miles!

[seapanda-]

This is not the price of running the internet. This is the price of tracking and storing everything you can about everyone who uses the internet.

[Esona]

Can confirm, working in a data center (being inside one) isn't really all that that it seems to be. It's loud, so you're walking around listening to music in noise cancelling headphones. It's hot, and it's cold (depending on where you're walking). And it's a lot of blinky lights.

[crytocc]

It's worth noting (as someone who works in the tech industry) that users _don't_ really demand more data storage, and that the amount of data generated by users hasn't really changed much over the past decade, with the one exception of more video calls (but that's usually transient data that doesn't need to be stored long-term). Where the increased demand for data and computing _actually_ primarily comes from, is companies trying to collect more and more data _on_ people for the company's benefit, as well as increased advertising infrastructure. This has very little to do with the end user, and they don't really see any benefits from this.

(Also, datacenter security is nowhere near as good as datacenters like to imply. It's pretty trivial to get into one, if you know how the industry works.)

Edit: to clarify, it is correct that generative AI has significantly increased datacenter computing requirements. But I am not counting this in "end user usage" because aside from a small handful of tech people, the overwhelming view of such "AI" systems by the general public has been disinterested or outright negative. In other words, their power consumption is genuinely a problem, but they're not really doing anything that people actually need; it's a rich techie's toy.

[cyrilio]

I find it fascinating how Google has over 180 GB on data on me (Total size of documents when I do GDPR data request). But I'm still on 13 GB in my email inbox and Google Photos.

[juanamillo]

Nathan, the host of the video, calls this place Ashburn, VA. We, the developers, call it US East 1.

[arevolvingdoor]

I have a family member who works at one of the listed data center companies. I will add a bit more info to what he has said so far in regards to why they wouldn't let you tour. I think it is also important to understand that aside from security concerns, these companies have no set plan on how to give you a tour. No one wants a tour, because it looks exactly like you think it would inside, a bunch of server racks. Secondly most data centers might be the size of an amazon fulfillment center, but only employ about 20 people. Granted these are higher skill and therefore higher paying jobs, but they require the people to be working around the clock. They aren't the people who will give you a tour, that would be the marketing team, which is likely not in Loudoun county, but another major US city.

[lmferrari]

I've been building/working in data centers for 7 years now
-Most of the permanent jobs are security guards, but they have contractors working there pretty much indefinitely.
-They are a much better neighbor then a saw mill or a chemical plant or something like that (no weird smells or loud equipment running)
-They use a callosal amount of electricity.
-A lot of times they will have agreements to get out of the tax bill.

[bSixf]

Most of this data is advertisements, user telemetry and highly unnecessary data collected on users.

[icicle_man]

11:58 8%?! Lol!! That's rookie numbers. Here in Ireland, data centres use 21% of all the electricity produced in the entire country. 😅😅

[Barquevious_Jackson]

I hate the internet, all my enemies live in my computer.

[Ryan-]

must be a lot of data centers in Virginia because it's close to Maryland, the NSA HQ 😂

[joelrobert]

I live 5 minutes from Ashburn and the government was trying to get everyone to get solar panels to generate more electricity for more data centers 😂

[jaxcoop]

I’ve been living in Ashburn for 20 years, and the amount of data centers built in the last 5 is absurd. They are a complete eye sore and have reeked havoc on local communities and ecosystems. I hate it

[Rab]

When I started out in Online ads, I was very confused why most traffic came from that city in Virginia. People's responses were simply, "data centers"

Please don't nuke this city.

[hltechie]

In a past job, the company I worked for needed offsite data storage. A local data center we were interested in gave us a tour of the facility because we planned to do business with them. Unless you are a future client, I doubt they would have been willing to give a normal person off the street a tour.

[jbird]

I wonder how much of that data we actually need. For starters, there probably is a metric shitton of duplicate files being stored somewhere in the cloud. And then there's the gigantic amount of consumer data that nobody really wants companies to keep taking. I clean up my harddrive every now and then, but this of course does not happen in datacentres because it's not their own data.

[steadholderharrington]

Can you just imagine how much Data storage and processing power would be freed up if they just deleted all the user usage logs, tracking info and other unnecessary user garbage on people? It'd practically be like a whole new level of speed and efficiency being suddenly discovered.

[Nova-md]

1:35 That black metal fence is low for a reason. If the fence is touched, security knows the exact GPS coordinates and height from the ground that the fence was touched.