Janus: Most utility employees have never worked during an era of load growth
Brian Janous · Energy is now the ‘primary bottleneck’ for AI · May 21, 2024 · at 13:45
Brian Janus discusses the cultural and operational adjustments required by electric utilities facing unprecedented load surges from AI data centers and manufacturing.
0:00 / 0:04exact quote · 4.8s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“Most people that work at a utility today have never worked at a utility during an era of growth.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Brian Janous
Janus: 2010s flat data center power was driven by cloud migration, not efficiency
“What was happening is you had a lot of businesses shutting down their own very inefficient data centers that were using multiples of the amount of electricity that a hyperscale data center would use. And the hyperscale data center could absorb that with signif…”
Janus: 2x more efficient AI chips will lead tech giants to deploy 2x more chips
“And, you know, I had someone ask me the other day, well, what happens if, you know, if NVIDIA comes out with a chip that's twice as efficient? And my response to that is, well, then Meta or Microsoft or Google will plug in twice as many chips. If they have the…”
Janus: Power availability, not chip supply, is the primary constraint for AI
“Absolutely power. Absolutely. I think, you know, six to 12 months ago, I think a lot of the companies were concerned about chip availability, but I think everyone has come around to realize that that is not going to be the biggest constraint.”
Janus: Utilities Can Meet Load Growth Without Heavy Natural Gas Buildout
“I think we can. I think there is a lot of levers that we have at our disposal, you know, and I have, I've had empathy for my friends in the southeast. I know that they're under a lot of pressure, and I know that, you know, they, they're at the tip of the spear…”
Janus: Carbon Accounting Allows Net-Zero Claims While Utilities Add Gas
“Both the things can be true that a company could be a hundred percent zero carbon by one measure, and a utility is building gas plants to support their load, so, and that's the problem, right? The carbon accounting rules don't necessarily connect the dots in a…”