Abstract:
OpenAI promises that in the data center parks directly built by it in the United States, when extreme weather or other emergencies cause pressure on the power grid, it will proactively reduce power consumption. Just as the high power consumption of AI computing centers has triggered public and political opposition and hindered industry expansion plans, OpenAI is promoting the construction of its own data centers.
News background: This initiative, known as the Grid Protectors Program, intends to expand the commitments made by the proposed data center campus in Effingham County, Georgia, to the United States.
In this project, OpenAI promises to reduce the power load by up to 1 gigawatt when the power grid needs to be reduced, which is roughly equivalent to the power consumption of 700,000 households.
OpenAI will blog later today: "Our goal is to make this type of load regulation capability a core component of future data center campus construction and operations."
The blog post reads: "This means... we will negotiate with the power company to determine the size of the load that can be reduced, the speed of response and the duration."
The specific plans for different parks vary and will be announced separately after the details are finalized.
Related statement: John McCarrick, head of energy policy at OpenAI, said that this move reflects changes in industry thinking, technology, and adjustments after absorbing community feedback.
He said: "About a year ago, I had a meeting with another large cloud vendor, and the other party was still insisting on the five nines reliability standard, but no one insists on this anymore." The "five nines" means that the data center must achieve 99.999% continuous online.
AI and technology giants including OpenAI have successively made commitments to be grid-friendly users and avoid driving up the electricity bills of ordinary residents.
OpenAI positioned Monday’s announcement as: from a visionary commitment to a set of practical operating rules.
OpenAI also proposed that data centers can actually benefit ordinary electricity users.
The blog post stated that AI’s stable power demand can dilute the cost of power grid infrastructure; and the load elastic adjustment capability promised this time can shave peak power during peak power consumption.
Follow-up observation directions: Policymakers have promoted data centers to have power consumption flexibility from many aspects.
The U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) requires grid operators to explain or reform the grid connection process for large customers, and relevant provisions encourage such flexible adjustments.
The Senate licensing bill explicitly allows states to make "peak hour power curtailment" a prerequisite for data centers to be connected to the power grid.
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