ORANGEBURG, New York — Apps and websites are thought of as things that exist purely in cyberspace, but the online world is held up by a lot of physical infrastructure. That infrastructure is increasingly under the spotlight amid the rise of power-hungry artificial intelligence technologies like ChatGPT.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some of that physical infrastructure comes in the form of large buildings full of computer hardware, known as data centers. Now, about 25 miles north of Manhattan, one of those crucial data centers is being erected at a construction site in Orangeburg, New York.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSo this is a purpose-built data center that\u2019s going to have five suites in it, five data halls,\u201d says Dan Fuentes, the Senior Vice President for Enterprise Sales at DataBank, the company behind the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Construction crews work to build a data center for Databank, Aug. 27, 2024, in Orangeburg, New York.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Databank\u2019s Orangeburg location is the size of a warehouse. However, in the industry, data centers aren\u2019t measured in square footage, but rather in megawatts of power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s gonna have 20 megawatts of critical power for our clients, so 30 megawatts total,\u201d Fuentes tells ABC Audio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Databank acts similarly to the owner of an office building. Companies as big as Apple and as small as neighborhood banks contract with the company, and those firms handle setting up and running their own computers and servers. Databank, meanwhile, is in charge of making sure those devices get constant security, cooling and power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSo we have large clients, large hyperscalers, large banks, large enterprise clients, AI clients, who want to put their infrastructure somewhere where they\u2019re positive it never goes down. So these data centers are purpose built to never have failure,\u201d says Fuentes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This data center is being built next to an electrical substation, from which the center will draw power most of the time, according to Fuentes. But in the event of a power outage or a natural disaster, huge generators that line the outside of the building kick on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Angel Otero, the operations manager for this data center, says in the event of a major power outage the generators can keep supplying power so long as they have fuel. It\u2019s something he encountered at a different data center during Superstorm Sandy in 2012.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAll the refineries on the East Coast were underwater, damaged,\u201d he says. \u201cWe had constant fuel shipments coming in from Philadelphia. And we had — just, we were running on generator power for about a week. No issues, no concerns, no problems. As long as we had fuel we were up.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Several large gas-powered generators line the outside of a data center being constructed in Orangeburg, New York.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Michael Dobuski\/ABC News<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Right now, there are more than 8,000 data centers around the world, according to the U.S. International Trade Commission, with more than 2,800 in the US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSo, globally, there\u2019s about 40 gigawatts of data center infrastructure installed around the world. About half of that is in the United States,\u201d says Databank CEO Raul Martynek.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And he says business is booming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAll that computation, as this technology has gotten more and more sophisticated, uses more compute cycles, uses more bandwidth, uses more storage. And all that drives demand for data centers,\u201d says Martynek.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
McKinsey predicts the data center industry will grow by 10% by the end of the decade. And while companies like Meta, Amazon, and Google have their own data centers, they also rent space from specially designed facilities, like the ones DataBank operates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cliff Stein, professor of industrial operations research and computer science at Columbia University, says all this attention on data centers shouldn\u2019t come as a surprise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIn the world almost everything we do is somehow tied to — either uses them directly or uses something that\u2019s needed on these data centers. And so, in order to keep the economy running, we need this,\u201d says Stein.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Everything from social media companies to streaming services rely on data centers, and recently, generative artificial intelligence has hit the scene.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNow with the Large Language Models, it\u2019s taken off, and it\u2019s grown tremendously,\u201d says Stein.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Martynek says the explosion of artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT, Google Gemini and Apple Intelligence has sparked even more growth in his industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s kind of like before ChatGPT and after ChatGPT. There\u2019s been a tsunami of demand over the last two years, as everyone wants to adopt this technology and incorporate it into their business. I think it really caught the industry flat-footed,\u201d says Martynek.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s why, he says, the sector is now in a race to build new data centers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the Orangeburg facility, Fuentes says their clients\u2019 computer hardware is going to live in one of five 20,000-square-foot rooms, known as \u201cdata halls.\u201d Floors will be installed about 3 feet off the ground, leaving room for industrial strength air conditioners. Because all this computing can generate a lot of heat, the design allows cold air under rows and rows of computers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Otero says that means the inside of a data center can get noisy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cDepending on how much utilization the customer is using at the time, yeah, it can get pretty loud in here. Noise canceling headsets are definitely a must,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Aside from the noise, air conditioners also require a lot of power. When that\u2019s coupled with the normal power needs a data center like this one demands, it raises some environmental questions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe consumption of a lot of energy, depending on where that energy is being sourced from, has an effect on the climate the same way driving more cars would,\u201c says Jake Bittle, a staff writer for the environmental magazine Grist who covers climate change and energy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf you rely on a lot of natural gas or coal power plants to sustain these data centers, that is going to have an effect on the climate because there\u2019s more fossil fuels being burned in order to power them,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A 20,000 sq. ft. “data hall,” that’s under construction at a data center, Aug. 27, 2024, in Orangeburg, New York.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The AI boom has only thrown fuel on the fire. A report from Goldman Sachs Research finds that asking ChatGPT one question takes up as much energy as ten Google Searches. Training a Large Language Model produces as much CO2 as five gas-powered cars, according to the MIT Technology Review. Bittle says as more data centers pop up to meet that demand, all that energy use could show up on consumers\u2019 electricity bills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou\u2019ll probably see some kind of strain on overall power supply. It may not have gotten there yet, but that would lead to some kind of impact for rate payers who, you know, are residential and commercial businesses,\u201d says Bittle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Martynek says to combat this, the industry is investing in more environmentally friendly power sources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe know that our electric grid is kind of outdated, it hasn\u2019t been modernized. And we need more renewable energy connected to the grid,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But both Stein and Bittle are skeptical that the data center industry can fully rely on renewables, at least in the near term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt seems to me like it can make a dent, but it\u2019s not going to — it\u2019s not going to solve the problem completely,” says Stein.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cEven though the companies are doing I think, in many cases, a lot of good things to reduce the energy and water consumption of the data centers themselves, they\u2019re just energy hogs and that has consequences,\u201d says Bittle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fuentes says that AI companies account for just a tiny sliver of energy capacity Databank has sold overall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAI is a component of it, but it\u2019s miniscule compared to the spectrum of verticals that we sell to.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the technology will be present in Orangeberg. Databank says when the location holds its grand opening later this year, 80% of the facility will be leased to Coreweave, an AI infrastructure company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n