The proliferation of data centers aimed at meeting AI computing needs could be bad news for the US power grid, says a new report in Bloomberg.
Using the million residential sensors tracked by Whisker Labs, as well as business intelligence data from DC Byte, Bloomberg found that more than half of the homes with the worst power distortions live within 20 miles of an activity important part of the data center.
In other words, there appears to be a link between proximity to data centers and “bad harmonics” – a term for the less-than-ideal flow of electrical power in homes.
Bloomberg says this “distorted” power could potentially destroy plugged-in devices, increase vulnerability to electrical fires, and even lead to brownouts and blackouts. And AI data centers could be even more problematic due to their volatile power requirements.
“No network is designed to be able to handle this type of load fluctuation not just for one data center but for multiple data centers at the same time,” said Aman Joshi, chief commercial officer of Bloom Energy.
A spokesperson for Commonwealth Edison of Chicago told Bloomberg that the utility “strongly questions the accuracy and assumptions underlying Whisker Lab’s claims.”
