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The story
It has emerged that a large-scale data center supporting Anthropic’s AI “Claude” will be built in Nova Scotia, Canada. According to CBC, the facility will be built and owned by EverWind Fuels, with Anthropic signing a lease on the first phase for at least 20 years. Power is expected to eventually come from four EverWind wind farms, but at launch the main supply will be the province’s existing electricity grid, which includes coal. On the Canada board of Lemmy, opinions were divided over a U.S. company operating the facility, the energy mix, and the water usage for cooling.
A massive data center supporting Anthropic’s Claude AI will be built in Nova Scotia
Source: cbc.ca / Read the original article here
What people said
The real shame is that this is dedicated to a single American company. That means it falls under the rules of American intelligence agencies. On top of that, Anthropic's financial outlook is pretty shaky too — it's one of the ringleaders hyping up the AI bubble. It's a shame they couldn't instead back a Canadian-made model, or at least an open-source one.
Is Nova Scotia's power mix mostly coal? Hadn't checked that.
Edit: yeah, it's falling, but it's still true…
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Here's apparently what the planned changes going forward look like:
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https://lemmy.ca/pictrs/image/3ea5a66f-595f-4840-ab38-f46da9c32c8d.png
https://lemmy.ca/pictrs/image/05514e6a-d33a-416a-bcab-6f266632ad9f.png
"EverWind's four wind farms are expected to eventually cover the data center's power needs, but initially the province's existing supply will be the main source" basically means: "It'll be mostly coal until around 2050 — nice round number, and by then it won't be our problem anymore." They could have just sized the data center to what current wind power can actually handle, but no.
Ha, that's funny. "EverWind Fuels will build and own the facility, and Anthropic will lease the first phase for a minimum of 20 years." I seriously doubt Anthropic will even be around in 20 years.
Is the 100,000-liters-a-day figure for the closed-loop flow rate?
Maybe, not sure of the exact setup. There could be an internal propylene glycol loop connected to the municipal water supply through a heat exchanger — water drawn from the tap runs through the exchanger, picks up heat, and then gets sent back out to the sewer.
Hold on, that's just the proposal — what actually happens could turn out completely different.
Background and Key Points of the Debate
Nova Scotia is a province on Canada’s east coast that has been shifting toward renewables like wind power in recent years, but its reliance on coal-fired electricity is still far from low. Under this plan too, until EverWind Fuels’ four wind farms come online, the bulk of the power supply is set to come from the province’s existing grid, coal included — a point that drew criticism in the thread for “talking up wind while actually running on coal.” The other major thread of debate was over Anthropic as a company in its own right, with skepticism about the AI boom’s staying power and the company’s financial footing running alongside more down-to-earth infrastructure concerns about the data center’s power source and cooling water, all playing out side by side in the same thread.
*This article is excerpted from the thread “Nova Scotia to Host Massive Data Centre to Power Anthropics Claude AI” on the overseas forum Lemmy c/canada, and has been freely translated by our editorial team. Responsibility for the translation rests with this site.
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