Google has entered an agreement with the Tennessee Valley Authority to reduce the technology company’s data center power use at certain hours of the day or times of the year, one of the first such deals related to its artificial intelligence work.
The tech giant operates two data centers in TVA’s service territory, one in Jackson County, Alabama, and one in Montgomery County, Tennessee. Google operates 29 data centers in 11 countries to keep its products running.
Google, one of around 60 customers that buys power directly from TVA, announced new agreements with TVA and Indiana Michigan Power in a blog post Monday.
The agreements are the first time Google has engaged in so-called demand response specifically for machine learning workloads at its data centers, which suck up power to develop AI products.
(READ MORE: TVA broke last summer’s power demand three times in July)