this post was submitted on 10 May 2026
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Does "9GW data center" not mean "a data center that consumes 9GW of power"?
Or is it "9GW of computers + 5GW of cooling + something"?
9GW should be the compute load goal, to which you need to add the mechanical and administrative loads. At higher scales they gain significant efficiencies which translates to market advantages.
its 9gw of consumption. 19gw of total heat generation.
For comparison, a blast furnace making steel uses on the order of 3600 GWh/yr and the energy comes primarily from coal.
9Gwh is a high number for a datacenter, but industrial processes use much more and much dirtier energy.
That's also one datacenter and the largest. Whereas there are many, many blast furnaces running all over the world.
9gw if run 24/7 (capacity utilization is actually low on average in US) is 551.88 twh/year. 1500x. Natural gas is not that much cleaner than coal from co2/ghg warming perspective.