Power Onward: S1E5 - The truth behind the cloud

This has been generated by AI and optimized by a human. 

Show ID [00:00:03]: 

This is Power Onward, the podcast that unveils how power technology shapes your everyday life. 

Show ID [00:00:22]: 

This is Power Onward, the podcast that unveils how power technology shapes your everyday life. 

Alijah [00:00:31]: 

What if I told you the cloud isn't a mystical place in the sky, rather a massive network of buildings spanning the size of San Francisco. You stream a song, you upload a video, back up your phone, but have you ever stopped to think about where the cloud is and how it was built? I'm Alijah. 

Kim [00:00:47]: 

And I'm Kim. 

Alijah [00:00:48]: 

Kim, you've worked in power systems and you know what it takes to keep the cloud running. Can you break this down for us? 

Kim [00:00:55]: 

Yes. I had the absolute pleasure of working with the data center team for about a year and a half when I first started at Cummins. And when I started the role, I didn't quite understand what my role was, but the longer I was there, I realized how crucial data centers are to everyone's day to day. So really happy to be here and explain a little bit more about what data centers are and what the cloud actually is. Because to your point, it feels so nebulous when we say the cloud. I always look up too. I'm like, the cloud. The cloud is not up in the sky. 

Kim [00:01:25]: 

It is actually these massive and like breathtaking brick and mortar locations, believe it or not. And these massive buildings are located where there's a lot of space or land, but they can also be found, like in downtowns of cities. So if you think about every song, you know, every movie, every video game, every everything, that all has to be stored somewhere. So if that gives you a perspective about how massive these data centers are, I cannot articulate that, can't put it in words. 

Alijah [00:01:53]: 

Can you paint a picture of what data centers look like and where are they usually located? 

Kim [00:01:57]: 

Yes. The typical data center actually uses as much power and electricity as 25,000 homes. That's like larger than some cities populations, I think, some small towns at least. But these data centers are located all over the world. And in the States you might see a lot of mentions of data centers in Virginia. It's also known as Data Center Alley. There's a couple in Silicon Valley as well because of those tech companies that really need to have that information close by. But these data centers, it's one building composed of several different rooms. 

Kim [00:02:26]: 

And if you think about like there's a control room, right? And that's where, where teams operate and monitor the performance of the systems. And then there are these server rooms. And when I say server rooms, think like modernized cabinets filled with all these server racks and server towers. It's almost like you're walking into an Ikea and it's like a wardrobe display or a closet display. And I feel like that gives you the visual of how many of there are as endless as the eyes can see, right? And within those, there's also cooling systems, because as you can imagine, things can overheat. I think even like a PlayStation or you use your phone too much, it gets hot and overheat. Think about all of these servers, all the power running through them, all the information that's being stored and processed. It gets really hot. 

Kim [00:03:11]: 

So those cooling systems are there to just ensure everything is in an optimal environment to perform the way we need it to perform. In addition to that, there are also fire suppression systems, because if the cooling systems fail, we got to make sure we can keep the fire out. When I was in a trip recently in Arizona, I actually drove through the city and saw two data centers just right offthe highway. And I got to my hotel room and there was Iron Mountain, one of the most massive data centers ever. The building was so stunning and like high tech looking. I don't know why, but I guess maybe older data centers have like this older look and feel. Very traditional brick and mortar. But these new ones are so stunning and so like futuristic and tech savvy. 

Kim [00:03:51]: 

They really draw your eyes to them. And I feel like that lends itself to the imagination of what's actually being stored in these data centers. I've said a lot about the different rooms and data centers, but I think if I could put this in a diagram, imagine a human cell. Let's go back to like elementary school, right? There's the nucleus. Consider that the control room where everyone is operating, making sure things are running well. And then we've got these mitochondria. Mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell. If you can remember that. 

Kim [00:04:18]: 

That's like verbatim what my science teacher told me. The mitochondria in this case is like a Cummins generator set, or genset for short. And these gensets can provide standby power in case there's a power failure or a grid failure. We don't want these things to happen because think about your experience, like on Instagram, and all of a sudden the server's down. That's what they say, the server is down and influencers are losing money and no one can get on Twitter or whatever that is. That is a power failure. What Cummins does is we provide the standby power or Data center continuous power to mitigate all of those issues so that you can stream your Netflix in peace and not have to worry about things being down all the time. 

Alijah [00:04:56]: 

Can you talk a little bit more about who relies on data centers? 

Kim [00:04:59]: 

Oh, my God, yeah. I think everyone who has a smartphone relies on a data center because we have so things available at our fingertips. I think we're kind of spoiled by that, but I'm not going to complain, right? It's so nice to pull up your phone and, you know, I start my day, I'm like, okay, let me check traffic, I'm pulling up maps, I put on a song. What's my vibe for the day? Again, I'm tapping into data centers mindlessly without even thinking about it. So there's, you know, the average person. If you think about tech companies like those who run social media platforms, The Facebooks, the LinkedIn, the Twitters, Xs of the world, they all need to rely on data centers to store all of that information. And then we've got tech companies like Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft, they are cloud providers. So again, back up to the cloud up here, they provide us with storage space. I back up all my photos on Apple's cloud. I have like a terabyte or a gigabyte or whatever large thing, whatever unit we measure with, but even Google Drive, I store a lot of my documents, my work things in there. So I'm relying on the cloud for several different things. And, and in addition to the tech companies and social media platforms, think about those who are streaming. A Twitch, a Netflix, a Hulu, a Max. Like all of those things are streaming platforms that would require a cloud to store all these movies, all these shows. We have retail, e-commerce. 

Kim [00:06:15]: 

We both worked at Finish Line. Think about how we tracked sales and tracked inventory. In addition to that, there are financial institutions like banks, the stock exchange. We wanted fraud detection and make sure that every transaction is flawless. Like, those all rely on data centers. And I'm not even touching into like the healthcare providers. How many patients are there in the world? I went to a doctor last week and I was like, I wonder what cloud service is like holding all of my client information that's super sensitive. Which reminds me, data centers are a big part of security and cybersecurity, even for the government. 

Kim [00:06:47]: 

So again, every aspect of life touches some sort of a data center. And it impacts us in a way that we just never knew. 

Alijah [00:06:54]: 

In recent years, we've seen AI become a bigger focus. How does that tie into the cloud? 

Kim [00:07:00]: 

Oh, my gosh, that's a great question. It's a very new unnavigated territory. But what I can say is that there are a lot of companies using AI and I even mentioned health care providers. They do AI diagnostics. I have like a robot telling me about my symptoms and what I actually have. It's peculiar, but it's also interesting. So with this surge of AI, there is a bigger need for data centers to supply power like none other. Because if you can imagine, an AI inquiry doesn't have a specific structure or a specific framework, right? It's just whatever someone types and then it has to compute something. 

Kim [00:07:34]: 

And so when you pull up your map, for example, those addresses are already in data centers and that information is stored somewhere. When you pick a song on Spotify, like, that lives somewhere. When I ask a ChatGPT inquiry, I mean, I'm loading it up, like, help me write this and add this. And what are some synonyms for this? Those are all such complex searches that require so much more power. And that said, I actually, I learned at a conference that one AI inquiry actually uses one liter of water. 

Alijah [00:08:04]: 

Wow, that's a lot. 

Kim [00:08:05]: 

It is a lot. And that's why we hear a lot of conversations about sustainability and energy costs. And honestly, it's a world that we're still trying to navigate. Like, how do we get there? Not sure yet. I think we're working towards that answer. But maybe we can run this back in a few months and have a couple of new tidbits to talk about. 

Alijah [00:08:21]: 

Yeah, absolutely. One final question that hopefully you do have an answer for. All of this feels so effortless. Can you talk about what kind of power makes all of this possible? 

Kim [00:08:33]: 

One of my favorite things about working for Cummins is knowing that we make an impact in everyone's day to day, that we can help keep things running effortlessly for everyone from sports to concerts. And of course, just normal things like when we want to binge watch something on the couch. So anytime you're clicking a link or having an AI inquiry chatting it up with ChatGPT, like think about the data centers every time you pull up an address. Like, I look up reviews to restaurants and I'm like, oh, where are you at? That's all reliant on a data center. And Cummins helps to provide that seamless power for those data centers, because if things go wrong there and the power fails, those gensets have to pick up automatically. That's what they're made to do. They're built to do that, to provide that endless power supply for the data centers to help make everything available to our fingertips. It's effortless to store and process data for the data centers, but Cummins has to power that, and that keeps downtime at bay, and all the resources remain at our fingertips. 

Alijah [00:09:27]: 

Thank you so much. This has been a really informative conversation. I really appreciate your time. 

Kim [00:09:31]: 

Yeah, thank you so much. 

Alijah [00:09:33]: 

All right, so what's the big idea for this episode? When you stream a movie or play a song, use your map app or do an AI search, that data lives in the cloud. But the cloud is actually a data center. It travels through cables at lightning speed to your Internet provider, then to your home network, where your modem and router send it to your phone, laptop or TV. It all happens in seconds. And it was all powered by data centers and kept up and running by generator suds. So the next time you queue something up or save something to the cloud, think about how fast that data gets to you and where it's actually coming from. 

Show ID [00:10:16]: 

Thank you for listening to Power Onward. Your support means the world to us. If you enjoyed this episode, please don't forget to subscribe, rate and review on your favorite podcast platform. If you want to dig deeper on what we covered today, check out the show notes for additional links or go to cummins.com/podcast. Until next time, Power Onward. We're from Cummins, the company that's been innovating toward the future for more than 100 years. We're no strangers to rapid change, global shifts, and economic uncertainty. We want to be your constant during the energy transition, whenever, wherever, forever. Power Onward.