With the rapid advancement of AI, systems need a lot of data centers to run and those data centers require a lot of energy. Electric Power Research Institute said US data center energy consumption will become more than double by 2030. This makes it 9% of the overall energy use.
For power-based companies, AI has become both a competition and an opportunity. AI data centers are getting more attention than cryptocurrency mining as AI is backed by large technology with more capital and power contracts. Every industry looks for profit and AI data centers are more likely to favor than cryptocurrency miners as AI is more lucrative and secure. Since AI has more financial backing, right now AI developers can more easily meet their power needs.
With this growing competition, crypto miners have found a way to cope by marketing whatever they have to AI data centers. It requires hundreds of thousands of dollars per megawatt of capacity to run cryptocurrency mining whereas it takes about $7 to $8 million dollar for an AI data center to function per megawatt of capacity, this is because AI data centers are more sound and sophisticated. They also require a lot of system cooling hardware. Even so, everyone says the future is shifting towards AI and they are investing a lot to cover its huge price requirements. One of the main techniques crypto miners are pitching power companies to let them use power is that, AI cannot be interrupted while crypto mining can be turned on or off rapidly making it a flexible load that can work on power-saving modes.
These are the things that are being discussed and the competition between these two energy-hungry industries has been greater than ever.
