The current rise of Large Language Models (LLMs) is not news anymore. Since around the beginning of 2023, LLMs have been the biggest talking point in technological advancements. People are looking at LLMs as a modern day counterpart to fire for humanity.
These LLMs are now being sold to millions of users, who ask questions ranging from 'what's the weather today?' to 'Explain this math homework'. I even generated the image below using a local LLM. Bizarre!
Whether LLMs will solve all current issues of humanity like climate change and economic equality is unclear. What we can say is their massive energy requirements and how this is currently shaping the industry.
If I were to oversimplify - LLMs today require GPUs to do the computation for next word prediction. For example, a normal personal computer that you have at home could technically run an LLM albeit at a very slow speed. Hence all the big players are retrofitting their own data centers with thousands of commercial GPUs. This creates a problem: the power requirement is now so high that normal commercial arrangements cannot support it. These power-hungry GPUs require a lot more energy, pushing data centers to on-site generation.
Given the high power requirement of these data centers due to the new GPU computing, renewables struggle to come into the picture. Hence the only viable solution to meet the power requirements of these data centers is on-site gas turbines.
This has of course driven prices of previously common gas turbines — such as the General Electric (GE) LM2500 and LM6000 — to extraordinary levels. Examples: before this data center boom we were dealing with LM2500 machines at around $1.5-2.5 million. Now the same machines are being asked for prices upwards of $15 million. A similar situation applies for the LM6000.
The reliability of these machines is non-debatable. These were machines that were introduced in the 60s for the US Navy. They were built for military requirements. There is however one area of concern for these turbines - their emissions!