A US regulator ruled on Thursday that Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company had acted illegally by using dozens of methane gas turbines to power huge datacenters in Tennessee.
At one point, up to 35 of these generators were powering Colossus 1. xAI eventually received permits for 15 turbines at Colossus 1 and is now operating 12 permitted machines at the site.
They say the datacenter, which sits a few miles from historically Black neighborhoods, has been adding extra pollution to already overburdened communities.
For xAI, which makes the chatbot Grok, the turbines are necessary to supply additional power to its huge supercomputers.
At full capacity, xAI’s Colossus 1 datacenter uses 150 megawatts of electricity – enough power to run 100,000 homes – and the company plans to expand.
Musk set up Colossus 1 in just 122 days during the summer of 2024, record time for getting a datacenter up and running.
According to Mississippi Today, the datacenter has 59 generators; 18 of those are considered to be temporary and do not have air quality permits. »