“AI” needs a lot of computing resources, which is why new data centers are cropping up anywhere there’s cheap land. But powering all those hungry servers takes a lot of energy, and overburdened power grids aren’t always up to the challenge. In addition to diesel generators and resurrected nuclear plants, data center operators are now repurposing airplane engines. Yes, really.

At the Data Center World Power Show in Texas, natural gas provider ProEnergy is showing off the PE6000, a power generator built by repurposing old jet engines from planes like the Boeing 747. Promotional pages claim this design can output 48 megawatts at a time, four to five times as much energy as a single-family home uses in a year. IEEE Spectrum (via Tom’s Hardware ) reports that 21 of these gas-powered turb

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