Re:Mistral: Our first AI endpoints are available in early ac...
by wongarsu on Monday December 11, 2023 @09:14AM
(#38600786)
During the crypto boom there were crypto miners in China who got really cheap electricity from hydroelectric dams built in rural areas. Shipping electricity long distance is expensive (both in terms of infrastructure and losses - unless you pay even more for HVDC infrastructure), so they were able to get great prices as local consumers of "surplus" energy.
That might be a great opportunity for cheap LLMs too.
So, 10kwh could be a lot less than what you cite. That's also how grid operators make money. They generate cheaply and sell with a nice margin. Prices are determined by the most expensive energy sources on the grid in some markets (coal, nuclear, etc.). So, that pricing doesn't reflect actual cost for renewables, which is typically a lot lower than that. Anyone consuming large amounts of energy will be looking to cut their cost. For data centers that typically means investing in energy generation, storage, and efficient hardware and cooling.