The AI ​​craze consumes too much electricity, and gas turbine prices have increased by about 300% in 3 years

IT House reported on July 12 that the artificial intelligence craze continues to heat up, and the competition around computing power continues to extend to the upstream of the industry chain. As the construction of large-scale data centers accelerates, gas turbines, a traditional equipment, are also facing new development opportunities. Gas Turbine is an internal combustion power machine that uses continuously flowing gas as the working fluid to drive the impeller to rotate at high speed, converting the energy of the fuel into useful work. It is a rotating impeller heat engine. According to CCTV Finance today, Microsoft purchased seven large gas turbines from energy giant GE Vernova a few weeks ago to power its data center in Texas. Although a single gas turbine is sold for more than 250 million US dollars (IT House note: the current exchange rate is approximately 1.697 billion yuan), the market demand for this complex equipment still far exceeds the supply. According to estimates by Melius Research, a US investment research institution, the price of gas turbines has increased by approximately 300% in the past three years. GE Vernova's share price has also risen by more than 70% in the past six months, and even its industry competitors, such as Caterpillar, Siemens, etc., have also achieved rapid growth. However, many experts said that gas turbines are not enough to meet all energy needs in the AI ​​era, and future data centers will still need a variety of energy solutions to support them. Related reading: "Nearly 50 gas turbines in Musk's xAI data center were accused of illegal operation and polluting air quality" "China Aviation Development's "Taihang" series gas turbine demonstration project completed evaluation and acceptance, achieving full autonomy" "my country's self-developed new 3-MW gas turbine was released, with a power density 10 times that of traditional steam turbines"