[OT] Google Wants to Use AI to Cut the UK's Electric Bill by 10 Percent

Try here for the FT article:

Extrapolating that a bit, Google spends say $100m each year on electricity to cool and control data farms. 30,000 3kW air conditioners working 24/7, not taking account of tax - which could easily double that. Boggling.

I don't think google understand power generation.

The only way to save energy from the generators is to shut down more of the plant when its not needed. Google can't predict the weather any better than anyone else so they can't predict when re-newables will go away so to keep the same level of cover they need to spin the same amount of plant. As for demand side prediction the humans appear to have that down to a fine art ATM. Letting google save us 10% just makes power cuts more likely.

As long as its those on green tariffs I am in favour.

I bet it has to be in charge of how to avoid tax bills as well then. I sit here, read this and its the biggest laugh I've had in years. They are making one error, and its a major one. In a server room its all automation. in a country one has to deal with human beings who are inherently error prone and illogical. Brian

Well google is one of those users that has a vary variable energy use and cause similar problems of indeterminacy that renewables do.

"It would be amazing if you could save 10 per cent of the country?s energy usage without any new infrastructure"

Yes it would, if you could.

But about the only electrical item I have which I wouldn't object to someone else remotely "peak shaving" is the fridge-freezer.

One thing to control things within a micro environment but a different thing to do it in the actual world.

I didn't click it because I don't want to "waste" my limited number of FT pages per month

but if that expands to an ft.com page, access it via a short-link it doesn't get around the subscription model at all

tim

Easy way would be to simply increase the price drastically. Most would then think twice about using it when not needed. Use the money raised to provide better insulation etc, as a longer term fix.

But this would be a restriction of freedom, so not allowed.

Does Google really think that the National Grid staff aren't trying to do this at the moment?

it's one thing to claim that you can make a 10% improvement over doing nothing (which is presumably what Google were previously doing in their server room)

quite another to claim that you can make a 10% saving over what experienced staff who have been performing this task for 40 years can achieve.

And that completely ignores the difference that when they are micromanaging the power to their servers they are dealing with a supply that can be turned on/off in micro seconds (because they are just leaching off a continual supply that someone else is making available to you) so that turning something off for half a second every 5 second (for instance) makes a saving that can be managed automatically which couldn't possibly be managed manually.

Whereas turning on/off new national power generators takes minutes and they certainly can't be turned on for 4 minutes and off for 1, and even if they could this could be achieved by manual intervention.

tim

I'm sort of inclined to agree but populations are far more predictable than the individuals that make up that population. Just as well or the current grid balancing wouldn't work as well as it does.

I suspect the biggest problem for the AI will be mother nature and poor weather forecasts.

I guess Googles bill for this service will be somewhere around 10% of the UK energy bill...

As browsers don't share cookies, you can view that number of pages per browser. Times the number of machines you own.

You would presumably need multiple accounts, and there might be something in the T&Cs to prevent multiple accounts.

are you sure that this is stored in a cookie?

I doubt that too many people are going to set up multiple accounts to circumvent restrictions on reading a newspaper article

personally, I just read the headlines and only read the FT version for something where the finance angle is really critical

normal news - I just go and read elsewhere

tim

Why does the energy use of G. vary so much?

LOL! You're joking, right?

They understand everything.

Quite. Plus the fact that AI can only "predict" based on historical data.

I hope we won't end up using this AI to shave a few percent off of reserve capacity and thus live closer to the edge.

There are already other companies offering similar services. Splunck comes to mind.

ercent-electric-bill/

I expect one day we'll have micromanagement that turns down or off lights w hen there's no-one in the room, adjust the fridge freezer when not at ideal temp, switches off the radiator when a window is left open, underclocks th e computer left unattended and turns down the hot water when it has learnt that no-one will be home for hours and so on.

NT