Blackstone Is Building a $25 Billion Empire of Power-Hungry Data Centers (bloomberg.com) 23
Blackstone is betting big on AI, plowing billions into data centers after its $10 billion takeover of QTS last year. The private equity giant is bankrolling the development of massive computing bunkers on hundreds of acres in Phoenix and other key markets to meet exploding demand from tech titans like Microsoft. With AI taking hold, QTS has become North America's top provider of leased data center capacity. But the data crunch has strained power grids. QTS estimates its data centers will tap 6 gigawatts of electricity, equal to the needs of 5 million homes.
Re:no water in AZ (Score:5, Interesting)
How much power does Palo Verde put out again? Three 1400 MW plants. They will have to build four new ones, maybe five unless they are willing to turn off the data center at sundown.
A Tesla Max-power battery is 3.9 MW-Hr, so to get through a 12 hour night we have 6 GW times 12 or 72 GW hours or 18,462 batteries. At 42 tons a piece (we always knew that number was important.) that comes to the equivalent weight of 7.75 Nimitz class aircraft carriers.
So during the day you need the 6 GW of solar to run the place, plus another 6 GW to recharge the batteries.
And all that ignores battery and inverter losses, clouds, and shorter winter days. That's a lot of effort to paste Taylor Swift's head on a pornstar body. But it is apparently what the market wants.
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Depends on the body :-p
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That data centers use a lot of water is mostly a myth.
Journalists use scare quotes about "millions of gallons". But a million gallons is, like, three acre-feet. Farmers in Arizona pay $20 per acre-foot for water from the Colorado River.
The data centers likely use less water than the farm that was on the land before they bought it.
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Re:no water in AZ (Score:4, Informative)
I dont think data centers "use" water
They use evaporative coolers, which consume water.
Heaters (Score:3)
I thought they were sinking these things in the ocean.
Paywall (Score:1)
What a brilliant plan (Score:5, Interesting)
Build massive heat producing, electricity-sucking server farms in a place which regularly sees temperatures over 100 degrees F for days, if not weeks, on end, with no shade anywhere, which has limited water supply and electricity.
Wonder how much in tax breaks and write-offs they'll get for this while the local people pick up the tab and have to deal with brown/blackouts.
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Prophets must have profits!
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AZ is notorious for luring resource intensive businesses with low taxes and guaranteed resources. Semi fabs going up all over the state with similar resource needs.
Well yeah, but if Arizona doesn't want to make itself attractive to businesses, Las Vegas will eat its lunch. /s
Copycat? (Score:2)
The name makes blackstone sound like a knock off of blackrock, like that "we have that at home" meme.
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Building these a couple of miles from my house (Score:3)
QTS is constructing some massive data centers right off of 202 and 40th st here in Phoenix, while the majority of large data centers are on the peripheries of the Phoenix Metro area these ones are in the heart of Phoenix, not too far from a couple of other massive data centers on 48th St and 202. While the need for more data centers is pretty keen, and housing them in the desert actually makes some sense from the standpoint of efficiency (non-humid air, predictable weather, low natural disaster probability) the consumption of water is problematic, however it could be argued that the data centers provide a more valuable resource for the community than the multitude of high hydro usage golf courses that exist in the Valley. Since AI is on the peak of the hype cycle, talking about these investments using AI as a driver makes sense from a luring investors standpoint, I think in practical terms that these data centers will more likely be focused on data storage over the long term, can't train models without tons of data, and collecting, organizing and presenting this data will be critical to build this new AI business. So be interested to see how a data center 5 years from now will look compared to today's existing centers.. Might have different requirements and objectives than we are seeing presently. I don't see this trend of building more and more data centers changing anytime in the near future... just how they are utilized evolving.
They're not betting big on AI (Score:2)
They are betting big on pick axes and shovels for the AI goldrush.