Power Is Only ~7% of a 1GW Data Center's Cost — Yet the Hardest to Get
AccBalanced · x · 2026-10-11
Citing Epoch AI estimates, jessiedong breaks down power economics: energy is only 7% of a 1GW data center's annual cost and 5% per H100 (1.5-2kW with cooling = $0.13-0.17/hr vs $2.85/hr rent). But power takes years to secure, making speed the dominant advantage. Result: big labs are building their own plants — xAI's Memphis gas turbines, OpenAI's Texas site (360MW), and Anthropic's new 1.6GW gas plant in Texas.
More from Infra
- Sentry CEO: startups gluing OTel onto ClickHouse will be the next o11y failures — zeeg · 2026-10-12
- AI networking DSP moats questioned: real differentiation lies with TSMC microrings and CPO — jwt0625 · 2026-10-12
- B200 benchmark: NVFP4 decodes up to ~8% faster than MXFP4 in low-batch LLM inference — StasBekman · 2026-10-11
- Fractile CEO explains why frontier labs don't all build their own chips — No Priors · 2026-10-11
- Defending Musk's 'no custom equipment': how standardization inertia slows chip fab innovation — jwt0625 · 2026-10-11
- JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley struggle 6 months to offload $38B Oracle data center debt — SumitGup · 2026-10-11