AI Needs So Much Power, It’s Making
Yours Worse

Cover the Earth - - every square inch - - with windmills! There - - I solved it with just eight words.

Paywall?

Suppose 100 million EV were plugged in at the same time.

We always need more power, not less, yet our energy policy is to produce less energy, all in the name of 'Saving the Planet'.

Who benefits from all this AI? I sure don't.

Reactive loads versus inductive loads is the issue. It's technically complex to explain, but it is real, and it can cause problems with the transformers and the generators at central power stations themselves. Not a trivial thing. Poor quality power can cause long term damage to anything with electric motors, air conditioners, refrigerators and freezers, etc, which run nearly all the time.

#2, yes, it’s behind a paywall. But you can read it in Reader View. The charts won’t display very well, but you can read the article. Very informative.

Per 5, I suspect that for the Evil Left, AI is planned to be the most powerful tool for controlling the masses since Television Propaganda.

If you want to see where AI could be headed, watch the Terminator movies.

Excuse me.....RESISTIVE versus inductive loads, my error. Mains power is alternating current, which literally means that it turns off and flows backwards then on and flows forwards sixty times per second. A resistive load is like a regular, normal light bulb or an electric heater. Power heats up the element due to it's resistance. An inductive load is more complex...like an electric motor, and these sorts of loads actually affect the timing of the pulses of power on the line because they sort of "ring" electrically, and this electrical ringing feeds back into the grid. Small amounts are OK because the grid is huge and can naturally dampen out some of this. Too much and the 'quality' of the power degrades and this can harm machines like electric motors. It's a very technical subject, not easily explained in simple terms, but it is real. There may need to be laws written to require large power consumers with inductive loads which are excessively distorting the grid to put in their own power conversion and correction systems. LARGE capacitors and inductive coils, carefully designed by experts (I am not one) would be needed. Big bucks to keep the grid stable.

Key point: FTA "Experts say several culprits can be behind bad harmonics, from industrial machinery to renewable energy inverters." Note the 'renewable energy inverters'. This is the kind of equipment that feeds power from solar panels into the power grid. Solar panels make direct current. Straight, constant voltage, not alternating current like on the power grid. Direct current can run certain things, but it has to be converted into alternating current to be fed into the grid. The conversion device is called an inverter. Depending on the exact design of the inverter, the inverter itself can react with the power grid and cause destabilization of the voltage and current phasing....what some of the articles refer to as 'harmonics'. In any case, solar panels and their inverters are also distorting the grid power. This is no minor thing, and it's all adding up. A little bit here, a little bit there, and soon electric motors are overheating and burning out in your furnace, AC, refrigerator, etc. And YOU will be paying to replace them.

Or - Are the AI brains taking a bigger share of power in order to defeat us and our puny home computers?

#10. Pretty good explanation. Most homes look like resistors to the power line. Inductive motors introduce a phase shift (power factor) between the voltage and current. Synchronous motors introduce an opposite power factor. Most power supplies use transformers to convert voltage from 11o V to a lower voltage, and they introduce the same power factor as inductive motors. For an extra cost, you can get zero power factor power supplies, but somehow, I don't think these computer complexes spent the extra money for zero power factor power supplies. I spent the extra money for a zero power factor power supply for my computer.

Re #13, thanks, not a simple topic. I'm thinking that power companies are going to start writing into their commercial power contracts something about no power factor problems caused by the equipment in the commercial customer's site. Putting in the necessary power conditioning systems isn't trivial, but also, not anything magical or incredibly expensive. Probably going to need to require some good look at solar installations, too. Inverters feeding the solar power into the grid.....I'm not even sure how they will be seen by the grid, as far as power factor and how the inverters react to change of the current-voltage phase of the grid itself. I'm thinking that the inverters may interact. This gives this ME a minor headache, this stuff is back in my dusty old storage area, seldom used in my normal job years, and now retired for 10 more....more dust gathered. Need some smart power guys to be looking hard at this and probably will need some new regulations or at least power company policies. I wonder how the damned wind turbines affect the grid and how they react to power factor shifts?