AI Data Centers Need Pioneers to Deliver Scalable Power via Offgrid AI

The scalable computing revolution of the late '80s through mid- '00s forged a new technical and economic model for computing that delivered massive societal impact, but its economic benefit has driven scalability to sizes that are now exhausting the energy grid's capacity. Our time demands a new revolution in scalable energy, mirroring in key ways the scalable computing revolution; e.g., compelling economic forces, use of mass-market components, overcoming foibles of those components, judicious use of physical locality, and the the difficult integration into an effective system. The offgrid AI approach closely fits this mold, combining local mostly renewable generation and storage to power an AI data center, starting offgrid. Obstacles to delivering this approach are social, technical, and project, but the potential is massive. I argue that the offgrid-AI approach needs pioneers among both system developers and AI-data-center operators to move it quickly from concept to large-scale deployment.