With 43 and counting,
data processing centers are popping
up all over Wisconsin,
like the Microsoft data center in
Mount Pleasant, where the tech giant
is developing a 1,900-acre
site after buying it from
Foxconn.
Data centers contain servers and
drives to store, process,
and disseminate data.
Companies like Microsoft, Amazon,
Google, and Meta operate large-scale
data centers.
The Great Lakes region is a popular
site for them because of the large
amounts of water data centers need
to cool the equipment.
But what about the electricity
needed to run them?
What are the implications of that
usage?
We turn to Lena Rowald,
professor in the UW-Madison
Department of Electrical and
Computer Engineering.
And thanks for being here.
Thank you for having me.
So.
We know that everybody talks about
the millions of gallons of water
that are needed to cool
these data centers.
But how much electricity do they
need to do all that processing,
like this Microsoft one in
Mount Pleasant?
So it varies quite a bit
by data center and the
type of data center.
But the Mount Pleasant data center,
I think, is supposed to use
about 450 megawatts
of power.
And that is a lot.
That's about the same amount as all
the households in Milwaukee.
And so if you talk about
43 data centers, obviously not
all as large as that, but across
the state of Wisconsin, that's
sucking a lot of power.
Yes, it is.
Yeah, and the projection is moving
forward with even more,
particularly of these very large
data centers coming, is that it will
consume really a lot of power that
is going to change, really,
the scope of use of electricity in
Wisconsin.
This growth of these centers seems
explosive, right?
And all of a sudden, have you been
surprised by it?
So I have been working on
data centers and their energy use
since about 2018.
And back then, it was already clear
that we are likely going to see
an increase in energy use from
data centers, just because it
was getting harder to keep
up the efficiency gains that have
allowed us to do ever more computing
with essentially the
same amount of electricity.
So for a long time, electricity use
was fairly flat.
But then now, so we were expecting
that there will be an increase.
But of course, with AI and
these large language models and
these very, very large models that
need really, really large data
centers for training and inference,
it's really been quite explosive, I
would say. So it's a bit
unprecedented for the grid to see
this amount of growth in this short
time period.
In Wisconsin, do we have
the capacity to provide the
electricity?
So it's not like there are hundreds
and hundreds of megawatts of power
that is just kind of laying around,
waiting to be used.
And so we don't
necessarily have the capacity to
meet all that demand as it is today.
And so, we are going to
need new infrastructure, new
transmission lines, new power plants
in order to meet that demand,
because it's also not like the
regions around us necessarily have
that energy.
So what about the cost of this
energy demand and then that
infrastructure of which you
speak? Does that get passed along to
the consumer?
Like, am I gonna see it in my
electric bill?
That's a good question, how much
of it and how that cost will be
spread. So you can imagine that when
more people want something, the
price sometimes tend to go up
because there's maybe a
limit to the supply of
that, of electricity.
But also the way utilities
do things is that they build
infrastructure to meet the demand of
their customers.
And they have to file what is
called a rate case with the Public
Service Commission in order to
determine how that cost is
being covered.
So they have ask for permission to
spend that money to build that new
infrastructure and they have talk
about how they are going to spread
that across consumers.
And there is a lot of open questions
in exactly how that is going to
happen. And so I think
both in Wisconsin but also elsewhere
in the country, there's a lot of
questions of how this
might impact consumer bills.
And frankly, to be honest with
you, I am not entirely sure where
the Public Service
Commission, for example, will land
with that, how the utilities will
do things and also what kind of
contracts these companies are able
to get with the utilities.
A lot of that will determine how
energy bills will or might change.
What would happen in peak times like
summer?
Can the grid in Wisconsin manage
that load and
are there concerns about blackouts
or that kind of thing?
Yeah, so already now,
during peak times in summer, it can
be challenging to meet the demand as
it is today.
So we have seen in past years that
there has been
warnings by NORC,
who is the regulatory body,
that has been saying that, okay,
there could be challenges meeting
peak demand in the Midwest during
summer peak hours.
And so what we might be
seeing is that there is a need for
more demand response.
I mean, you might be familiar with,
for example, energy rush hours,
where the utility says, okay, I'm
going to control the thermostat in
your home and make it a little bit
warmer during those peak hours to
reduce the amount of electricity
that we need in order to cool the
house during summer
when it's very warm.
And so, of course, this happens, if
it happens at the household level,
there are very small changes in
energy demand.
The effect comes from many, many
people adjusting their temperatures
at the same time.
So we could see more of that, but
we could also see that data centers
actively participate in this
and that they are able to reduce
their energy demand during those
peak hours.
And if they are to do so, we are
going to need less infrastructure,
there would be less stress on the
grid, and there would a lower chance
that there would large impacts.
Like blackouts.
Blackouts, typically,
hopefully we will not see that
because utilities are quite good at
predicting energy demand,
and particularly large data centers,
it might be possible to know a
little bit in advance how much they
will use.
So hopefully we would not get there,
but there's definitely an
increased stress on the grid that
could be challenging to manage.
All right, well thank you very much,
Professor Lena Rowell.
Yeah, you made it understandable.
Like, you know,
electrical grid.