Musk’s “Colossus” AI data center is spewing methane from portable gas turbines: report
In September, Elon Musk announced that xAI had fired up its massive “Colossus” AI data center in South Memphis, Tennessee. Musk boasted that the whole project took only 122 days to complete.
Powered by 100,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs, the supercomputing cluster is considered the largest in the world.
To spin up such a power-hungry data center, xAI relied on a loophole that allows for the use of portable gas turbines for up to 364 days without a permit.
The 150 megawatts of energy it currently gets from a local utility was not enough to cover huge spikes in power demand for the cluster, so the company brought in 35 portable gas turbines. The company told residents that only 15 of the turbines were in use, but now the Southern Environmental Law Center has evidence that more were being used.
Flying around the data center site and using a thermal imaging camera, 33 of the turbines appeared hot, indicating that they were in use or had recently been.
Residents who are worried about the environmental effects of the heavier-than-expected use of the gas turbines will attend a public hearing today to lodge their opposition and call for greater transparency.
Musk has said he wants to scale the data center up to 1 million GPUs.
To spin up such a power-hungry data center, xAI relied on a loophole that allows for the use of portable gas turbines for up to 364 days without a permit.
The 150 megawatts of energy it currently gets from a local utility was not enough to cover huge spikes in power demand for the cluster, so the company brought in 35 portable gas turbines. The company told residents that only 15 of the turbines were in use, but now the Southern Environmental Law Center has evidence that more were being used.
Flying around the data center site and using a thermal imaging camera, 33 of the turbines appeared hot, indicating that they were in use or had recently been.
Residents who are worried about the environmental effects of the heavier-than-expected use of the gas turbines will attend a public hearing today to lodge their opposition and call for greater transparency.
Musk has said he wants to scale the data center up to 1 million GPUs.
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