Google orders billions worth of hydropower for AI
After investing in nuclear power and nuclear fusion, Google is now also putting money into hydropower. But that won't create new sources of electricity.
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(Image: heise online / anw)
Google has secured up to 3,000 megawatts of hydroelectric power generation capacity in the eastern and midwestern United States. Brookfield Asset Management and Brookfield Renewable have announced a framework agreement to this effect. The background to this is the enormous power requirements of artificial intelligence (AI), which Google relies on, and the power shortages that already exist. However, the agreement does not mean that new hydroelectric power plants will be built.
AI computing tasks are so complex that existing data centers cannot cope. Instead, a new class of huge server cities is planned. The limiting factor is the availability of suitable electrical facilities, especially electricity. In the US alone, an additional 50 gigawatts of electricity capacity may be needed by 2027. AI companies are therefore spending a lot of money to secure sufficient power supplies, otherwise there will be no point in building the new data centers.
No new hydroelectric power plants
In May, Google commissioned the construction of three nuclear power plants in the US. Each will have a capacity of 600 megawatts. The following month, Google again invested money in a nuclear fusion start-up and also issued a purchase guarantee for a future nuclear fusion power plant. These measures are intended to bring new power plants online.
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The cooperation with Brookfield is different. According to the company, the Google deal will result in Brookfield extending the operating licenses for existing hydroelectric power plants and possibly renovating or upgrading the facilities. However, given the general power shortage and the resulting price increases in the relevant regions, this might have happened anyway, for other customers.
3 billion dollars in the first step
The first concrete contract under the framework agreement with Google stipulates that Brookfield will reserve 670 megawatts of capacity from two hydroelectric power plants in Pennsylvania for Google. Brookfield will extend the operating license accordingly. One of the two power plants also supplies the railroad company Amtrak and will continue to do so; in this case, the extension of the operating license would probably have been necessary anyway.
Brookfield's announcement does not reveal how many years Google has secured the 670 megawatts for, nor how much electricity will then flow. The contract is said to represent “more than three billion US dollars worth of electricity.”
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