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One Big Data Center Begets Another: Power, Water, Heat, Noise? No Problem

Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.

Yep, here’s another post about data centers. Many years ago, wrote an article about storage for Online Magazine. I think that write up won an award in 2000 or so. The main point is that 16 years ago, storage regardless of type was a wall flower at the computer prom. Flash forward to 2026, data centers are moving into discos, bars, restaurants, and most places. Some in Memphis, Tennessee, have learned that living next to Elon Musk’s jet turbine powered facility produces sound waves that jostle one’s intestines. The Musky facility is not that big when compared to some other “if we build it, they will come” monuments to the next big thing.

I read “This AI Data Center Will Be Bigger Than 2,000 Walmarts and Dump 23 Atom Bombs Worth of Energy into the Environment Every Day — and Locals Are Terrified.” The atom bomb reference snagged my attention. These facilities are boxes stuffed with computers and assorted gear, cables, and blinking boxes.

Data center professionals feel the heat and smell the success of their new facility. Thanks, Venice.ai. Good enough.

The write up offers this statement:

The proposed campus reportedly spans around 40,000 acres in Box Elder County, Utah, an area larger than many major cities. Some estimates compare the total footprint to roughly 2,000 Walmart stores combined. Others note the project boundary is more than twice the size of Manhattan.

Utah certainly has vacant land. Water and power? Yeah, these may present a problem in the future. The owners of the 2,000 Walmart-sized facility won’t be living next door. Maybe a visit to Park City or a 4×4 based glamping weekend in Arches National Park?

The write up points out:

But, beyond the physical size is the electricity demand. Developers say the facility could eventually require up to 9 gigawatts of power. For perspective, Utah’s current statewide electricity demand typically peaks around 4 to 5 gigawatts. That means a single AI-focused campus could theoretically consume more power than the entire state currently uses. To support that level of energy demand, developers plan to build large natural gas power plants directly on site instead of relying solely on the public electrical grid. This concerns environmental groups as it could dramatically increase carbon emissions across the region while creating massive amounts of waste heat in the valley.

In case you are not hip to the natural resources of Utah, it has one interesting characteristic. The uranium capital of the world used to be Moab. Plus, uranium ore can be found in the Colorado Plateau, Wayne County, the Colorado and Green River basins, and some other places as well. If Utah needs power, someone might consider nuclear for the big dog data centers. Who doesn’t want a modular nuclear reactor near their home?

The write up states:

Critics fear the combination of large-scale power generation, industrial development and rising temperatures could accelerate desertification and worsen air quality in surrounding communities. Some researchers have warned about potential “heat island” effects while others worry the development could contribute to long-term dust problems similar to growing concerns around the shrinking Great Salt Lake.

Several observations seem to be warranted:

1. Utah has uranium. Maybe someone will think, “Hey, with some milling and processing, we’ve got a way to boil water, turn turbines, and make lots of electricity.
2. Expanding uranium operations in Utah may require some fancy dancing. Here’s a quick anecdote. I found myself on a tour with my wife of several scenic areas in Utah. On the trip was a real, live PhD geologist. When I asked questions about uranium reserves and mining operations, he just looked at me blankly. I pressed him, and he then avoided me. Some people in Utah don’t want tourists running around Moab with Geiger counters I concluded. My first trip to Utah was to visit my employer’s nuclear related operations in Utah and adjacent states. Grants, New Mexico, was an interesting excursion too.
3. The water issue will be an interesting one to follow. Do you remember studying the Great Salt Lake? Well, if you want to see it with water, you may want to hurry. But there is snow in the mountains, you might think. I think you mean, there may be snow in the mountains in the future. But there is ground water, right? I think you want to get current information about how the ground water levels have changed over the last 10 years.

One big data center is a precursor to more big data centers. That power and water stuff is going to be more significant than the heat and noise outputs. I am glad I am old. The one glimmer of hope is that this “industrial” approach to AI will be unnecessary when more efficient methods are available. Until then, visit Memphis. See, hear, and feel the future at the Grok/xAI Colossus data center in Memphis. It is located on the site of the former Electrolux plant in at 3231 Paul Lowry Road.
Memphis, TN 38109

Stephen E Arnold, May 22, 2026

Cutting a Deal Using Hatfield-McCoy Method

Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.

Elon Musk and Sam Altman are engaged in a complex legal dust up. One notable characteristic of the trial is the number of childish, petty, and duplicitous behaviors presented by both sides. If I were in this type of high stakes AI game, I would be somewhat cautious in my dealings with Elon (Full Self Driving) Musk.

I read “Musk Once Called Anthropic Evil. He Is Now Powering His Woke Competitor’s AI Expansion.” The Euro News article says:

Musk’s SpaceX has leased its Colossus 1 supercomputer to Anthropic, giving Claude’s maker a massive compute boost despite a previously bitter rivalry.

I immediately thought, “Trust.”

Thanks, Venice.ai. Two young executives has become two geezers. Close enough.

The article continues:

The deal gives Anthropic access to more than “more than 300 megawatts of new capacity [and] over 220,000 NVIDIA GPUs within the month,” according to a subsequent Anthropic statement, and will directly benefit subscribers to its Claude Pro and Claude Max plans. A Musk-Anthropic union is as unlikely as they come. The man who called Anthropic “evil” and a company that “hates Western civilization” a mere months ago now controls the infrastructure powering the expansion of Claude and enabling the rollout of extended programs for its paying users.

Euro News points out:

The company’s entire brand identity is built on “responsible AI,” and its models are trained with Constitutional AI, a framework with baked-in ethical constraints that Claude’s developers say makes it more likely than its competitors to decline requests, express uncertainty about sensitive topics or push back on prompts it deems harmful.

I wonder if Elon Musk is aware of the criminal investigation into Grok in France. Is Anthropic considering this investigation? The article reports:

The ultimate hit that collapsed Grok’s brand came in early 2026 when the chatbot generated at least 1.8 million sexualized depictions of women over nine days, along with imagery of minors, triggering investigations by regulators across Europe, Asia and the United States.

On the surface, Anthropic gets compute. As the company moves forward with opportunities in Europe, will the tie up with Elon Musk become an issue? I predict that some questions about the interaction of Mr. Musk’s infrastructure and Anthropic will be surface in some French government circles.

It will be interesting to see how this “deal” plays out. In the meantime, the Musk-Altman legal matter provides an opportunity to learn more about these two big AI tech luminaries (BAIT) approach their business relationships. A dispute between Mr. Musk and Anthropic, if one surfaces, will produce more information about the business methods of BAIT outfits.

Stephen E Arnold, May 19, 2026

Insurance: A Data Center Issue of Some Financial Import

Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.

There is nothing like a write up about insurance to make one’s endorphins spike. I read an article on Moneywise titled something like “Amazon Lost $150 Million When Drones Hit Its Gulf-State Data Centers Amid the Iran War — And Insurance Won’t Cover It.”

I wanted to show shooting fish (data centers) in a barrel. But guard rails are in place to make sure I don’t damage the sensibilities of those humans and bots reading my blog posts. So, you get a person fishing for a big catch in a small fish bowl. I love AI generated illustrations. Yes, Venice.ai. Just good enough like those insurance policies with small typography.

The article reported on April 24, 2026:

The AWS facilities weren’t random targets. As geopolitical tensions escalate, data centers — the backbone of cloud computing, AI and digital services — are increasingly viewed as strategic infrastructure. They underpin communications, logistics, payments and military planning …

War is one of those things for which insurance companies are thrilled to process claims. No big surprise. When bad weather trashes an insured house, those insurance companies often huddle with their lawyers and actuaries to figure out how to keep whatever cash they have on hand in their piggy bank.

The cited article added:

For tech giants, that can mean hundreds of millions of dollars. For smaller businesses that rely on cloud infrastructure, it can mean lost revenue during outages, limited compensation for disruptions or higher insurance premiums going forward.

I noted this passage and the big number in it:

Amazon’s reported $150-million hit is a warning shot: even the world’s largest companies aren’t insulated from geopolitical risk, and neither are the systems consumers depend on.

With regard to Amazon, overheating at some of the firm’s data centers surfaced as a minor problem. Heat, however, is a known issue. The overheating creates an opportunity to ask a couple of questions: Was the engineering of the cooling systems subject to some efficiency decisions that make overheating more likely, not a non-issue? Were decisions made with regard to the robustness of the cooling infrastructure so that if one system were stressed another “system saver” subsystem kicked in?

Now the implication of the Moneywise story is that Amazon’s data centers located in or near a war zone were not hardened. These data centers are now subject to targeting by forces hostile to Amazon or the country in which the data centers are located.

Let’s consider Amazon’s options:

1. Harden existing data centers as part of the service restoration process. The question is, “How much will post construction and post remediation cost?” My thought is that the costs could be substantial.
2. Build more robustly engineered and hardened data centers elsewhere. The cost of this rather dramatic shift means that Amazon loses good will in the countries on the periphery of the war zone with no guarantee these relocated facilities would not be targeted with additional strikes to emphasize the vulnerability of very large flat roofed, exposed structures.
3. Repair existing damaged data centers and absorb the costs of remediation if additional strikes hit home.

I have not seen an analysis of the vulnerabilities of other US-linked data centers in the war zone. With no resolution of the US-Iran conflict in hand, data centers make attractive targets. Replacement infrastructure is simply not a matter of waiting for a two-day delivery via DHL. The key point is that traditional design and engineering of data centers makes them obvious targets to make clear the vulnerability of MBA-type assumptions. Is Amazon alone? Nope. Other US firms are in the same predicament.

Stephen E Arnold, May 12, 2026

About Those Data Centers. Yeah, the Ones with Targets on Satellite Imagery. Those Data Centers

Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.

I read “Amazon Stuck with Months of Repairs After Drone Strikes on Data Centers.” The write up contained a number of factoids I found interesting. One example is the statement “AWS stops billing Middle East cloud customers as repairs to war damage drag on.”

Let’s think about this statement, assuming that it indeed accurate.

Thanks, Venice.ai. Good enough for an act of generosity.

Amazon, for some in the conflict zone and peripheral areas, synonymous with cloud computing. I would argue that in certain areas Microsoft Azure has a more prominent profile. For the present discussion, let’s focus on Amazon. The company does not publish a name, location, and facility capability description for each of its infrastructure locations in Bahrain, UAE, Saudi Arabia,Oman, and Qatar. But Amazon lists AWS regions and availability zones and direct connect locations, usually providing the city and the country. With that information, it is not too difficult to pinpoint the exact location of Amazon facilities by [a] asking a taxi driver if one is in country, [b] making some contact with government-linked business “facilitator,” or [c] getting some gig work market research via Fiverr.com.

My point is that the article makes clear that at this point in time (May 2, 2026 at 236 pm US Eastern time) Amazon has a number of facilities that could become targets at any time. This adds to the challenge Amazon and other data center operators face in contentious parts of the world. How can these facilities defend themselves against drone attacks? If attacked, how can the damaged facility be repaired and returned to “normal” operation?

The reason I bring this up is that the cited article makes a big deal about Amazon not billing Middle East cloud customers for the damage that has occurred. That’s okay. There are some problems that plague the approach:

1. So far Amazon has been able to cope with the damage to the handful of its data centers; however, the implication in the write up in my opinion is that getting these facilities back to pre-attack status is not quick and easy. Those two factors translate into costs. Amazon is investing in AI; the company is terminating some employees who are not productive. The “grace period” cannot be extended indefinitely it seems to me.
2. If hostilities flare up, data centers are easily identified without help from nations with satellite imagery. This means that a coordinated attack could take out a number of data centers simultaneously. I can envision war planners thinking, “Why not take out the Bahrain and Saudi facilities on one day and then go after the Microsoft Azure facilities the next day?”
3. Companies providing services to the large data center operators can also be easy and vulnerable targets. What defensive measures does Equinix-type companies have in place?

Let’s think about how commercial firms like Amazon can protect these quite large, easily findable, and highly vulnerable data centers. Options range from the use of World War II methods like sandbags, temporary defense shielding, and Kevlar shrouds. These are cheap and visible “protections.” The problem is that a drone only has to fly into a power or cooling vent, and the “off switch” can be flipped.

More robust defensive measures run into the same problems as the repairs to damaged facilities: Time, resources, and costs. Data centers vulnerable today will be vulnerable to some indeterminate time in the future. Thus, until the facilities are hardened, they are at risk.

If we think in terms of an aggressor attacking data centers owned by US companies in other countries, the attack surface becomes much larger.

Several observations are warranted:

1. The success of attacks on the Amazon facilities makes clear that these structures were not designed, engineered, and constructed to withstand a drone- or other kinetic attack. That seems to have been what I would call an ill-considered decision. The reasons may range from keeping costs down or MBAs in the US don’t think too much about  asymmetric issues.
2. Data centers now under construction may require expensive hardening if these facilities are located in regions where they become large, easily located targets. Stated another way: The cost of those under construction data centers are likely to go up and require more time before they go online and produce revenue for their operators.
3. Future data centers will warrant some design, engineering, and construction scrutiny. The success of Ukraine drone in damaging distant Russian infrastructure is a new factor at least for the “Z” folks.

The Ars Technica write up includes this passage:

The latest AWS status update comes just after another data center developer, the London-based Pure Data Centre Group, said it will pause Middle East data center investments until the ongoing Middle East conflict subsides.

Pure Data is thinking clearly. However, can one really go home again or step into the same river twice? The massive US investment in data centers makes these facilities even more attractive targets than they were when Amazon experienced its first attacks. Going forward, addressing the issue means data centers are going to get more expensive, not less expensive. Statements like “stop billing” might be tough to honor.

Stephen E Arnold, May 4, 2026

The EU: Another Government Does Some Fancy Dancing

Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold. I find it interesting that AI detectors identify my writing style as AI output. I suppose I should be flattered, but I just don’t care.

The European Union loves to fine American companies. I suppose if I could ring up some notional money, publicize my stance against American overreach, and get elected — I would do some fancy dancing.

I read an article  or exposé published by Investigate Europe. “How Big Tech Wrote Secrecy into EU Law to Hide Data Centers Environmental Toll” states:

Microsoft and DigitalEurope, a lobby group whose members include Amazon, Google and Meta, secured a secrecy provision in EU law to block public access to critical information on data centers’ environmental impact, Investigate Europe can reveal.

What’s a Digital Europe? My recollection is that it consists of more than 100 high-tech outfits and what are called “national trade associations.” I interpret this phrase to mean “soft advocates” for big technology.

Thanks, Venice.ai. Good enough.

Investigate Europe figured out that big AI tech outfits or what I call BAITs worked hard to make sure that the environmental impact of large-scale data centers was not widely known, disseminated, talked about, or provided to citizen groups willing to carry signs. No big surprise to me. Investigate Europe, on the other hand, appears to have be in a cloud of unknowing. I find that darned interesting.

The write up reports:

With the EU set to triple its data center capacity in the next five years, the European Commission started collecting key metrics like energy efficiency and water consumption from facilities. However, information on individual facilities’ footprint is kept secret, after industry pushed to amend the 2024 legislation to classify it as confidential and commercially sensitive.

This strikes me as standard operational practices for BAIT-type outfits. Now folks are worried that bad things will come about when the data centers power up. The write up says:

Europe is building data centers at break-neck speed, with €176 billion in investment expected over the next five years. The rush has triggered widespread concerns about pollution and intense energy use as well as impacts on communities and natural habitats.

Let’s not forget consumer impacts like “power shaping.” Someone’s sensitive electronic devices, including a few with uninterruptable power supplies or back up generators, may be tested. Failures mean that someone might hear, “Daddy, my mobile is not charging.”

Who crafted the confidentiality wordage? I don’t know, but it seems as if some of the Microsofties played a role. The report offers this factoid as a quote from Bram Vranken at the Corporate Europe Observatory, an NGO in Brussels:

“The fact that the Commission copy-pasted a Microsoft amendment is shocking,” Vranken said. “Who does the Commission really represent: Big Tech or the public interest?”

My answer to this question is that dolphins, herring, and black stork are probably not the EU’s primary concern when it comes to data centers.

Investigate Europe is working with other publishing outfits to pass the word that fancy dancing has taken place. More hoe-downs are likely to be held to make sure that power, emissions, noise, and assorted infrastructure projects are kept under wraps.

This is not a surprise.

Stephen E Arnold, April 29, 2026

Give Up And Learn To Love Data Centers

Tech Radar shares one story that puts a damper on any good news related to AI technology going carbon neutral or green: “An Ex-Programmer’s Devastating Take On AI Data Centers Is Going Viral — And It’s Hard To Ignore.”

Data centers are also bad for the environment (land and water), takes advantage of tax breaks, and brings few jobs to stimulate local economies. Ravenna, Ohio is a small town that might become home to a new AI data center. An ex-programmer by the name of Hollingsworth delivered an insightful speech about the harms of datacenters at a meeting in Ravenna.

Hollingsworth challenges the idea of closed-loop water systems and believes that the forever cooling chemicals will probably make their way back to the water table despite all the studies that say otherwise. Hollingsworth said:

“Ohio is becoming a major battleground over AI infrastructure, with communities questioning whether the trade-offs are worth it. The push back feels less reactionary from somebody like Hollingsworth because of his credibility as an ex-programmer and working with AI models in the past. He frequently says that he is not against new technology or AI in particular, but the costs required for it to run come at a price, and it’s one that the city and its residents will end up paying if the planning permission is given the go-ahead.”

Some folks are a bit more feisty. “Facing Angry Residents, Minnesota City Halls Are Ground Zero for Data Center Battles” reported:

Just a few years ago, neither cities nor residents had much reason to think about data centers. The facilities have operated at a small scale across the state for decades, often treated like warehouses or light industry. But as AI fuels a data center boom, Minnesota cities face a seemingly exponential number of development proposals without much state regulatory guidance. And residents’ concern over the large facilities and their societal effects are rising just as fast. The charged debate touches on everything from energy and water use to noise and legal risk. City officials are caught in the middle. Some, such as Bloomington and Golden Valley, have passed zoning ordinances to set rules on location, noise and size. Others, including Eagan, Carver and this week, New Brighton, have chosen one-year pauses on new data centers to study their impacts.

My view is that BAIT (big AI tech) outfits will hire legions of attorneys, support political candidates who like the idea of data centers, and promise a green approach. States like Ohio might roll over and let the BAIT outfits scratch their tummies. Other states, possibly Minnesota, might take a different approach.

What’s interesting is that data centers take time to build. Certain components are in short supply and expensive. The permits can be a hassle. But the big issue is technology advances. More efficient algorithms may reduce the need for the data center build out. But the dark thoughts might be: What if AI demand does not meet the projections of the spreadsheet jockeys? What if different methods deliver significant efficiencies? What if someone comes along with a way to leapfrog the Google transformer method.

Poof. The data center problem declines in important. Yep, dark thoughts.

Whitney Grace, April 20, 2026

Oracle Chained: Is James Bond Available?

Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.

I read a data center report with an ominous vibe. “Oracle Is Building Yesterday’s Data Centers with Tomorrow’s Debt” reports:

OpenAI is no longer planning to expand its partnership with Oracle in Abilene, Texas, home to the Stargate data center, because it wants clusters with newer generations of Nvidia graphics processing units, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Brave Roman soldiers know the biggest  and most modern ship in the fleet has been rammed and will sink. Thanks, Google. Close enough for horse shoes.

I find that anonymous reports and unidentified sources a very good indicator of the effort a news gathering output expends for a story.

Okay, we have some clicky names: OpenAI, Oracle, and Nvidia. Stargate has a weird Captain Video resonance. And Abilene? I think it is known as the official storybook capital of the US. Oh, yes, there are wide open spaces, some water, some power due to Texas’ outstanding power generation set up, and cows.

The article states:

Oracle secured the site, ordered the hardware, and spent billions of dollars on construction and staff, with the expectation of going bigger.

But — and  this is an important “but” —  the story presents:

OpenAI is no longer planning to expand its partnership with Oracle in Abilene, Texas, home to the Stargate data center, because it wants clusters with newer generations of Nvidia graphics processing units

What is behind this Oracle problem? The write up asserts:

For the companies building frontier models, the smallest improvement in performance could equate to huge gaps in model benchmarks and rankings, which are closely followed by developers and translate directly to usage, revenue, and valuation.  That all points to a bigger problem at play. For infrastructure companies, securing a site, connecting power and standing up a facility takes 12 to 24 months at minimum. But customers want the latest and greatest, and they’re tracking the yearly chip upgrades.

The “real” news story seems to be in the last paragraph, and I quote:

Beyond Oracle, GPU depreciation is a risk for the broader market and could have ramifications across the AI landscape. Every infrastructure deal signed today may result in a commitment to outdated hardware before the power is even connected.

The issue is time. Data centers require time to build. Outfits like Nvidia operate on Silicon Valley clock cycles. The challenge of getting the two approaches to time to line up is difficult. When the timing does not line up, multiple costs stack up. One hopes that whiz kids can figure out how to deal with two clocks without collapsing under the fungible weight of the intangible clicks. In a James Bond film, the fictional hero stopped the ticking clock at 007. Without his skills, the bomb housing to which he had been handcuffed would have detonated.

Is James available to provide consulting advice to Oracle- and OpenAI-type outfits?

Stephen E Arnold, March 18, 2026

A Pragmatic Look at Data Center Power: Just Turn Everything on at Once. No Problemo.

Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.

A happy honk to the UK online information service the Register. “Your Datacenter’s Power Architecture Called. It’s Not Happy” presents some useful information about how AI compute data centers operate when the “on” button is pressed. The article explores in reasonably a non-EE geeky way some of the different facets of taking a corn field in Louisiana or a tobacco farm in Tennessee and building a five soccer field size data center. Heck, make it bigger. Land is cheaper than in Manhattan. Go for 20 soccer fields of AI compute hardware.

Yep, AI is close enough for horseshoed. Thanks, MidJourney. Nice fire.

The write up says:

GPU clusters and AI accelerators don’t operate on the old rules. They don’t ask for 15 kW. They demand hundreds of kilowatts per rack, an order-of-magnitude leap that legacy electrical and thermal architectures were never designed to survive. The comfortable assumptions baked into decades of datacenter design are now liabilities, and the industry is facing a reckoning it can no longer defer.

What? Are big time AI outfits kicking the can down the road or simply ignoring the fact that “power” is just there. It’s like water. In their accelerated lives, power has not been top of mind. Now the whiz kids at big tech AI companies have an opportunity to learn about the challenges their acres of computers and assorted gizmos will require.

The write up identifies a number of issues; for example:

Let’s talk about the current-squared problem and resistive losses. Because power loss scales with the square of the current, even small reductions in current lead to significant increases in efficiency. The power distribution efficiency is governed by Joule resistive loss (P_{loss</loss> = I²R).}

If you are not into this power lingo, the author seems to be saying that the new AI compute data centers require some extra engineering. Why? The pricey CPUs and GPUs can run hot. These devices plus RAM and solid state storage are voltage?sensitive. Even idle or under utilized racks can run at higher temperatures than old-fashioned data center racks. When demand hits to create a video for grandma, the AI compute system has to deal with heat. AI centric systems can throttle themselves. Pushing harder means that electrical noise can become a factor. Furthermore, failover is harder because the stacks are non?identical and latency?sensitive.

How do you deal with infrastructure challenges, power, and cooling? Answer: Novel engineering and money. The problem is that these big AI compute data centers are now the equivalent of the room-sized mainframes in the late 1950s. The solutions make 20 somethings laugh when the Smithsonian in DC puts some of its historical hardware on display.

The real equations are not the EE marvels. Nope, the basic equations pivot on the cost of time required to engineer, design, test, and manufacture the components necessary to keep power draw lower and temperatures even lower. At the same time, the solutions have to allow the CPUs and GPUs to go fast.

Accelerationists think about software. Accountants and people with common sense think about plumbing. Experienced professionals think about time and how much it costs to crunch quite challenging engineering into tiny intervals. Speed can kill data centers, the financial dreams of high tech whiz kids, and some businesses.

What happens when one tries to scale these nifty data centers? No big deal. We are big tech doing AI. We have the answers.

Stephen E Arnold, March 12, 2026

Who Pays for Electricity?

Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.

The cost of electricity is an interesting topic. Figuring out power demand and the cost of the infrastructure requires research, math, experience, and knowledge of technical options. I worked years ago with a utility rate expert. He was a specialist, and he was, no pun intended, in demand.

I thought about the easy assumption that power is just available. Buy a gizmo, plug it in, and it turns on. The electric bill arrives, and it is relatively predictable. Rates typically don’t gyrate chaotically. When my family lived in Brazil, the power would go off but the “cost” of the electricity was reasonably predictable. What happens when one assumes that a data center can be built and plugged in? The electricity is there and the bill arrives. No big deal.

When the batteries go dead, recharging may be a challenge. Thanks, Venice.ai. Good enough.

Nope. Big deal. Utility demand forecasting is tricky when nothing wobbles too far from the forecasters’ and analysts’ projections. Plugging in numerous data centers means that the complex machinery for power generation has to be refigured. Behind the scenes of what is to most people a power generation company are many moving parts. Out of sight and out of mind does not mean easy to operate and trivial to scale.

I thought about this assumption that electricity is just “there” when I read “Tech Giants Sign Energy Pledge at White House Ahead of Midterms.” The operative word is “pledge.” Promising to pay for electricity required to run the data centers some companies are building, trying to build, planning to build, and hoping to operate is just that a promise. A promise is not cash. Furthermore, I am not sure the “tech giants” know the cost of the electricity their AI factories will require.

The BBC article “Tech Firms Pledge to Pay for AI data Center Power Costs. But Will They?” cuts to the core of the electricity problem. The write up states:

The tech pledge may be difficult to enforce, said John Quigley, a senior fellow at the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. He cited the multiple layers of government, grid managers and electricity regulators involved in power projects.

Saying is one thing. Doing is another.

When it comes to power generation, fast talk may provide superficial reassurance to some people. The shift from a pledge to forking over money may not be the same as putting one’s luxury car in gear and allowing the smart self driving vehicle to whisk the passengers to an off site face to face meeting. How is that working out by the way?

Several observations:

1. Rolling out cost effective power generation takes time, specialty manufacturing, and planning. One does not ring up a company and have a modular nuclear generating machine dropped off at the loading dock.
2. Creating electricity and getting it where it needs to be are shotgun marriages of old-fashioned technology, advanced materials, and infrastructure both physical and digital. The costs to ensure a happy, stable union are usually steep and difficult to project with accuracy.
3. People living near a new or expanded power generation facility, infrastructure, or a big data center might throw a wrench in the works. What few people realize is that power generation is one of the more vulnerable “it’s just there” services. Angry consumers can create some tricky challenges easily and quickly.

Net net: Pledges are not power. Pledges are words. Power generation makes modern life possible, yet few whiz kids know anything about the business. When the power goes away as it did where my family lived in Brazil, one needs a Plan B. A pledge is not a Plan B. A pledge is public relations.

Stephen E Arnold, March 9, 2026

Google: Cracks in the Facade of Smart

I find it amusing that a company with the smartest people in the world cannot fail gracefully. When the GOOG goes down hard. I discovered this chugging along from rural Kentucky to a rural location in South Carolina. Google did not deliver. Once I was able to fire up a connection which actually worked, I read “Google Outage Takes Down YouTube, Gmail, and Snapchat in Parts of US.” I learned:

Discord, Snapchat, and Vimeo users are also experiencing issues logging into the apps, and these all use Google Cloud on the backend. “We are experiencing high levels of network congestion in the eastern USA, affecting multiple services in Google Cloud, GSuite and YouTube,” says a Google spokesperson in a statement to The Verge. “Users may see slow performance or intermittent errors. We believe we have identified the root cause of the congestion and expect to return to normal service shortly.”

Now about those smart people. Are too many trying to abandon assignments which have zero future for the zippier work? Of course not. Google does not have Android fragmentation or other technical weaknesses. I would suggest that some work needs to be done on foundational services.

Stephen E Arnold, June 2, 2019

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  Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.

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