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The Download: AI’s energy future

technologyreview.com Rhiannon Williams 2025-10-02 09:10:00

In May, MIT Technology Review published an unprecedented and comprehensive look at how much energy the AI industry uses—down to a single query. Our reporters and editors traced where AI’s carbon footprint stands now, and where it’s headed, as AI barrels towards billions of daily users. We’ve just produced a short video to accompany that investigation. You can read the original full story here, and check out—and share— the full video on YouTube here. AI is changing the grid. Could it help more

Topics: ai centers data electricity grid

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Finnish City Inaugurates 1 MW/100 MWh Sand Battery

news.ycombinator.com Steve Hanley 2025-10-14 02:00:47

Support CleanTechnica's work through a Substack subscription or on Stripe There are more ways to store energy than just using batteries. Some are using fire bricks, particularly for process heat for industries that rely on high heat in manufacturing. Others propose an arrangement of massive concrete blocks that move up and down like the weights of a giant grandfather clock, converting kinetic energy to potential energy and back again. In Finland, two intrepid engineers began experimenting with

Topics: battery electricity heat heating sand

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Stressed Ice Generates Electricity, Researchers Find

gizmodo.com Gayoung Lee 2025-10-15 01:50:33

Don’t mess with ice. When it’s stressed, ice can get seriously sparky. Scientists have discovered that ordinary ice—the same substance found in iced coffee or the frosty sprinkle on mountaintops—is imbued with remarkable electromechanical properties. Ice is flexoelectric, so when it’s bent, stretched, or twisted, it can generate electricity, according to a Nature Physics paper published August 27. What’s more, ice’s peculiar electric properties appear to change with temperature, leading researc

Topics: electric electricity flexoelectricity ice researchers

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Google announced the next step in its nuclear energy plans

theverge.com Justine Calma 2025-11-06 17:45:58

is a senior science reporter covering energy and the environment with more than a decade of experience. She is also the host of Hell or High Water: When Disaster Hits Home , a podcast from Vox Media and Audible Originals. Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Google is one step closer to reaching its nuclear ambitions now that it’s working with public power utility Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) to purchase electricity from a next-generation

Topics: electricity energy google nuclear power

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Musk's Tesla applies to supply power to British homes

feeds.bbci.co.uk Unknown 2025-11-25 02:17:07

Musk's Tesla applies to supply power to British homes Tesla did not immediately reply to a BBC request for comment. Tesla, which is best known as one of the world's biggest makers of electric vehicles (EV), also has a solar energy and battery storage business. If approved by the energy watchdog Ofgem, it would allow Tesla to take on the big firms that dominate the UK energy market to provide electricity to households and businesses in England, Scotland and Wales as soon as next year. Elon Mu

Topics: electricity energy supply tesla uk

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AC or DC: Which Is Better?

wired.com Rhett Allain 2025-12-10 17:30:00

As the story goes, the rock band AC/DC took its name from a label on an old sewing machine in the Young brothers’ home. It must have meant that the machine could run on either alternating-current or direct-current electricity. Today, all the newfangled electronic devices in our homes run only on DC power—even lighting fixtures, now that LEDs have replaced incandescent bulbs. But wait. The electricity that comes out of your wall socket is alternating current. That means each device needs to conv

Topics: current dc direct electricity power

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AI in Wyoming may soon use more electricity than state’s human residents

arstechnica.com Unknown 2025-12-17 08:24:16

On Monday, Mayor Patrick Collins of Cheyenne, Wyoming, announced plans for an AI data center that would consume more electricity than all homes in the state combined, according to the Associated Press. The facility, a joint venture between energy infrastructure company Tallgrass and AI data center developer Crusoe, would start at 1.8 gigawatts and scale up to 10 gigawatts of power use. The project's energy demands are difficult to overstate for Wyoming, the least populous US state. The initial

Topics: electricity project state twh wyoming

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This startup wants to use the Earth as a massive battery

technologyreview.com Casey Crownhart 2025-12-19 11:00:00

In traditional pumped hydro storage facilities, electric pumps move water uphill, into a natural or manmade body of water. Then, when electricity is needed, that water is released and flows downhill past a turbine, generating electricity. Quidnet’s approach instead pumps water down into impermeable rock formations and keeps it under pressure so it flows up when released. “It’s like pumped hydro, upside down,” says CEO Joe Zhou. Quidnet started a six-month test of its technology in late 2024, pr

Topics: electricity energy quidnet water zhou

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Google’s data center energy use doubled in 4 years

techcrunch.com Tim De Chant 2026-02-09 21:52:39

No wonder Google is desperate for more power: The company’s data centers more than doubled their electricity use in just four years. The eye-popping stat comes from Google’s most recent sustainability report, which it released late last week. In 2024, Google data centers used 30.8 million megawatt-hours of electricity. That’s up from 14.4 million megawatt-hours in 2020, the earliest year Google broke out data center consumption. Google has pledged to use only carbon-free sources of electricity

Topics: company data electricity google power

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Google’s data center energy use doubled in four years

techcrunch.com Tim De Chant 2026-02-10 03:52:39

No wonder Google is desperate for more power: the company’s data centers more than doubled their electricity use in just four years. The eye-popping stat comes from Google’s most recent sustainability report, which it released late last week. In 2024, Google data centers used 30.8 million megawatt-hours of electricity. That’s up from 14.4 million megawatt-hours in 2020, the earliest year Google broke out data center consumption. Google has pledged to use only carbon-free sources of electricity

Topics: company data electricity google power

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The Download: Google DeepMind’s DNA AI, and heatwaves’ impact on the grid

technologyreview.com Rhiannon Williams 2026-02-19 12:10:00

When scientists first sequenced the human genome in 2003, they revealed the full set of DNA instructions that make a person. But we still didn’t know what all those 3 billion genetic letters actually do. Now Google’s DeepMind division says it’s made a leap in trying to understand the code with AlphaGenome, an AI model that predicts what effects small changes in DNA will have on an array of molecular processes, such as whether a gene’s activity will go up or down. It’s just the sort of ques

Topics: activity biologists dna electricity grid

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The Debrief: Power and energy

technologyreview.com Mat Honan 2026-02-22 16:00:00

Yet in many ways right now the US seems to be forgetting those lessons. It is moving backward in terms of its clean-energy strategy, especially when it comes to powering the grid, in ways that will affect the nation for decades to come—even as China and others are surging forward. And that retreat is taking place just as electricity demand and usage are growing again after being flat for nearly two decades. That growth, according to the US Energy Information Administration, is “coming from the

Topics: administration centers data electricity energy

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New York City's Power Is Going Down Amid Brutal Heatwave

futurism.com Unknown 2026-02-24 08:09:13

"Like an air fryer, it's going to be hot." America Unplugged While a gigantic heat dome parks itself like an unwelcome guest over a major swath of the United States, residents of the ultra-dense metropolis of New York City are the perfect example of a country so cooked by climate change that it's overwhelming existing infrastructure. More than 3,000 people were without power for a second day in a row in parts of Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island, according to local broadcaster PIX 11. Con Ed

Topics: electricity grid heat like power

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New York’s getting a new nuclear power plant

theverge.com Justine Calma 2026-02-26 12:45:24

is a senior science reporter covering energy and the environment with more than a decade of experience. She is also the host of Hell or High Water: When Disaster Hits Home , a podcast from Vox Media and Audible Originals. New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced plans today to develop a new nuclear power plant, the first to be built in the state in decades. It’s the latest signal that nuclear energy could see a comeback in the US thanks to wide-ranging support from some strange bedfellows: the

Topics: electricity energy new nuclear power

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Inside the US power struggle over coal

technologyreview.com Casey Crownhart 2026-03-05 12:00:00

But the Trump administration wants to keep coal power alive, and the US Department of Energy recently ordered some plants to stay open past their scheduled closures. Here’s why there’s a power struggle over coal. Coal used to be king in the US, but the country has dramatically reduced its dependence on the fuel over the past two decades. It accounted for about 20% of the electricity generated in 2024, down from roughly half in 2000. While the demise of coal has been great for US emissions, the

Topics: coal electricity energy past power

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Scientists achieve 1,000-fold increase in solar electricity using ultra-thin layers

techspot.com Skye Jacobs 2026-03-09 15:03:00

Forward-looking: A team of German researchers from Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg has unveiled a significant advancement in solar energy technology, revealing a method to dramatically increase the amount of electricity certain materials can generate when exposed to light. Their approach involves stacking ultra-thin layers of different crystals in a precise sequence, resulting in a solar absorber that far outperforms traditional materials. At the core of this discovery, published in S

Topics: electricity layers light solar titanate

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Finland warms up the world's largest sand battery, the economics look appealing

news.ycombinator.com Tim De Chant 2026-03-10 17:03:51

It doesn’t look like much, but Finland recently flipped the switch on the world’s largest sand-based battery. Yes, sand. A sand battery is a type of thermal energy storage system that uses sand or crushed rock to store heat. Electricity — typically from renewable sources — is used to heat the sand. That stored heat can later be used for various ends, including to warm buildings. The economics are compelling, and it’s hard to get any cheaper than the crushed soapstone now housed inside an insu

Topics: battery electricity heat sand town

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Finland warms up the world’s largest sand battery, and the economics look appealing

techcrunch.com Tim De Chant 2026-03-11 03:54:29

It doesn’t look like much, but Finland recently flipped the switch on the world’s largest sand-based battery. Yes, sand. A sand battery is a type of thermal energy storage system that uses sand or crushed rock to store heat. Electricity — typically from renewable sources — is used to heat the sand. That stored heat can later be used for various ends, including to warm buildings. The economics are compelling, and it’s hard to get any cheaper than the crushed soapstone now housed inside an insu

Topics: battery electricity heat sand town

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How the first electric grid was built

news.ycombinator.com Alex Chalmers 2026-03-12 02:34:03

The Linear No Threshold model says that there is no safe level of radiation exposure. There is overwhelming evidence it is false, yet it inspires the ALARA principle, which makes nuclear power unaffordable worldwide. Read the lead article from Issue 19 of Works in Progress. We’re hosting a Stripe Press pop-up coffee shop and bookstore on Saturday, June 28, in Washington, DC. RSVP here if you can make it. In 1883, Sir Coutts Lindsay, owner of the Grosvenor Art Gallery in Bond Street, decided th

Topics: electricity generation grid local power

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What’s driving electricity demand? It isn’t just AI and data centers.

technologyreview.com Casey Crownhart 2025-11-10 15:00:00

Take the US, for example. The IEA report points to other research showing that the 10 states hosting the most data center growth saw a 10% increase in electricity demand between 2019 and 2023. Demand in the other 40 states declined by about 3% over the same period. One caveat here is that nobody knows for sure what’s going to happen with data centers in the future, particularly those needed to run AI. Projections are all over the place, and small changes could drastically alter the amount of en

Topics: demand electricity emissions growth new

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Latest Tech News

The Download: AI’s energy future

Finnish City Inaugurates 1 MW/100 MWh Sand Battery

Stressed Ice Generates Electricity, Researchers Find

Google announced the next step in its nuclear energy plans

Musk's Tesla applies to supply power to British homes

AC or DC: Which Is Better?

AI in Wyoming may soon use more electricity than state’s human residents

This startup wants to use the Earth as a massive battery

Google’s data center energy use doubled in 4 years

Google’s data center energy use doubled in four years

The Download: Google DeepMind’s DNA AI, and heatwaves’ impact on the grid

The Debrief: Power and energy

New York City's Power Is Going Down Amid Brutal Heatwave

New York’s getting a new nuclear power plant

Inside the US power struggle over coal

Scientists achieve 1,000-fold increase in solar electricity using ultra-thin layers

Finland warms up the world's largest sand battery, the economics look appealing

Finland warms up the world’s largest sand battery, and the economics look appealing

How the first electric grid was built

What’s driving electricity demand? It isn’t just AI and data centers.

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