[1] https://energyandpolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Payin...
That said.
> Normally, that would be enough to keep around 15,000 homes up and running.
Am I the only one who finds this kind of comparison meaningless? Like it's supposed invoke a feeling of "15K homes worth of power! How absurd that a data center use that much!" but that kind of how all centralized things work. That datacenter does work for, one would assume, way more than just 15K homes and if those homes wanted the same "work" output they'd use the same, or most likely, more energy to accomplish the same thing.
In many/most cases they aren't using electricity just to use it, they are using it because people are paying them for the output. With economies of scale I would guess a datacenter is many times more efficient than if we were all running local models at home.
Again, not an argument for data centers as much as I find this comparison always pointless.
It is pretty easy to compare against homes because they consume on average 1 kWh of electricity (in the U.S.). It could be something else, but 99% of people have homes they live in, so this is something directly linked to their experiences. So it is not meaningless at all.
Nonetheless, I doubt that the xAI datacenter had such footprint constraints that it really needed the smaller jet engines. Perhaps the time-to-delivery for really big Diesel generators was too long, so they opted for the already available repurposed jet engines.
The efficiency of the generators with jet engines could be increased a lot if the heat from the exhaust gases would be recovered and used to generate extra electric power, with a steam turbine or with another kind of turbine with Rankine cycle, e.g. with organic vapor.
I'm guessing most gas power plants use the combined cycle, otherwise you'd be wasting the energy of the exhaust gases. That uses a steam turbine heated by exhaust gases from the gas turbine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined-cycle_power_plant
But they do have certain drawbacks, and may not be the most EFFECTIVE for a given application.
You do have to look at a long list of constraints and use cases.
And sometimes, time to market is the most critical factor so you take whatever you can get your hands on. Which xAI has repeatedly proven that they will do, regardless of the environmental consequences.
I remember doing the math for small power generators and the math didn't work out for small turbines until the diameter of turbine went up in size, before which a diesel engine was better. But when scaled up, turbine generators were rapidly making up and surpassing diesel generators.
I wonder how well a LM6000 would handle multiple drone ingestions.
They need to get through a lot of filtration and potentially evap coolers, or that stuff could just become FOD.
If you get a large transformer that didn’t make you wait multiple years, then you stole it, or bought it out from underneath someone else. Or, it was damaged somehow and has supposedly been rebuilt perhaps with questionable materials and reliability.
And transformers are surprisingly easy to damage.