"In early November, Texas-based New Era Energy & Digital announced plans to build a "hyperscale," meaning massive, AI-processing data center complex in Lea County, New Mexico, the epicenter of the Permian Basin oil and gas drilling boom. The campus will be so big, and use so much power, that, if and when it is built, it will come with its own nuclear and gas power plants, with a mind-blowing combined generation capacity of about 7 gigawatts."
"That's like piling the West's largest nuclear and natural gas plants - Palo Verde and Gila River, both near Phoenix - on top of one another, and then adding another 800 megawatts. That kind of power could electrify something like 5.3 million homes, though these power plants' output presumably will all go toward more pressing requirements: processing movie streaming, doomscrolling, social media posting and, especially, AI-related activities."
New Era Energy & Digital plans a hyperscale AI-processing data center campus in Lea County, New Mexico, at the Permian Basin epicenter. The proposal includes on-site nuclear and gas power plants with roughly 7 gigawatts of combined generation capacity. That capacity equals stacking the region's largest nuclear and natural gas plants plus an additional 800 megawatts and could electrify around 5.3 million homes. The proposed plants would primarily power intensive data processing for streaming, social media and AI. Even a portion of similar proposals would substantially transform Western power grids, landscapes, and economies.
Read at High Country News
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