AI Collaboration at Armasuisse, implications in Business and Defence

Automation and usage of AI will triple data center energy demand by 2028. Spain can lead Europe's green AI revolution or watch other countries seize the competitive advantage. 🇪🇸🌱⚡

While the initial models training and tuning is a large and straight forward quantifiable consumption, once created the LLM and in the hands of the public, then the major costs start to be the inference, i.e. our queries to the LLM.

The energy consumption is easier measurable in electricity terms, to run the training (models creation) or inference (actual usage of the model); and on top of that there is energy consumption for the cooling and extra computers related work.

Short explained:

💬 Text consumption widely depends on the numbers of trained parameters or size of the LLM. Range: 8 billion parameter model ~ 114 joules per response, equivalent to run a microwave for 0.1 second, to a 405 billion parameters model ~ 6,706 joules per response (microwave for 8 seconds).

🖼️ Image generation does not necessarily consume more energy than text, 1024 px x 1024 px quality image, is in the mid range of text consumption ~2,282 joules per image

🎥 Video creation is a very energy intense activity, 5-second video: about 3.4 million joules, more than 700 times the energy required to generate a high-quality image (1h of microwave)

🤖 AI agents for automation have, as well, a meaningful consumption per task.

We are turning to green energy to power our homes and electrify our cars, we probably want our queries to be the least harmful to the environment:

• Most data centers in the USA are located in grids with high production from carbon fuel sources (48% above average). Many data centers in Spain have a “backup” fuel power plant, they might want to reconsider battery utilisation.

• Consumer perspective speaking, most AI intensity tasks could be scheduled for mid day, at the peak of green energy generation.

Regarding policy:

• In Spain’s peninsula we share the energy mix, and we can through a nation policy keep it as green as possible, encouraging battery installation to remove fuel powered plants for grid stability.

• We have to keep in mind that no network grid related subsidies are given to data centers, by local mayors or regional governments, that all consumers end up paying.

Contact me if you want to power your industry with renewable energy, in my role as a broker connecting producers with strategic buyers, I have a current PPA offering Wind + Solar for large consumers and diverse technologies installations available for acquisition: solar, wind and batteries.

Read the two articles in English and Spanish, by James ODonnell and Casey Crownhart. English Spanish