With AI training, unlike a lot of datacenter work, you have the option to "Make models when the sun shines" and just turn things off at night. That'll push you towards cheaper but less power efficient older node compute but I think the business case should work.
Right now in the US there's about as much proposed renewable production planned and awaiting permitting as their is currently installed. It's the grid connections that are the long pole in expanding renewable use right now. And since the voltage that a solar panel outputs is pretty close to the voltage a GPU consumes you've got some more savings there.
There are still a lot of challenges with that but in general I think people should be looking for ways to collocate intermittent production of various things with solar farms right now, from AI models to amonia.
Right now in the US there's about as much proposed renewable production planned and awaiting permitting as their is currently installed. It's the grid connections that are the long pole in expanding renewable use right now. And since the voltage that a solar panel outputs is pretty close to the voltage a GPU consumes you've got some more savings there.
There are still a lot of challenges with that but in general I think people should be looking for ways to collocate intermittent production of various things with solar farms right now, from AI models to amonia.