this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2025
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ChatGPT 5 power consumption could be as much as eight times higher than GPT 4 — research institute estimates medium-sized GPT-5 response can consume up to 40 watt-hours of electricity (www.tomshardware.com)
submitted 15 hours ago by homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
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The University of Rhode Island's AI lab estimates that GPT-5 averages just over 18 Wh per query, so putting all of ChatGPT's reported 2.5 billion requests a day through the model could see energy usage as high as 45 GWh.

A daily energy use of 45 GWh is enormous. A typical modern nuclear power plant produces between 1 and 1.6 GW of electricity per reactor per hour, so data centers running OpenAI's GPT-5 at 18 Wh per query could require the power equivalent of two to three nuclear power reactors, an amount that could be enough to power a small country.

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[–] Melonpoly@lemmy.world 6 points 13 hours ago (3 children)

It takes less energy to dry a full load of clothes

[–] morto@piefed.social 7 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (2 children)

Maybe you're mixing Wh with kWh. 40Wh is not that much, but it's still a lot for a single request.

[–] Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works 4 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Roughly the capacity of a laptop battery, a huge amount of energy per request.

[–] macaw_dean_settle@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago

A very small laptop battery.

[–] Melonpoly@lemmy.world 4 points 9 hours ago

Yeah I think I have

[–] MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 10 hours ago

A standard dryer is more like 2-5kWh for a load.. Far more than 40Wh.

[–] LodeMike@lemmy.today 6 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

40 watt-hours? That's the energy usage of a very small laptop.

[–] Dremor@lemmy.world 12 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

Imagine if you had to empty your whole laptop battery every time you had to generate a 20 lines response that may not even be correct... That'll end up consuming power really fast.

[–] jj4211@lemmy.world 2 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Well over the course of an hot or two, but it's correct that a dryer run even with heat pump is significantly more than 40wh

[–] Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works 2 points 4 hours ago

The original commenter said they mixed up wh and Kwh.

My entire house uses under 40Kwh a day, and it's winter where I am at the moment.