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 1 day 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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[–] jsomae@lemmy.ml 13 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (2 children)

For reference, this is roughly equivalent to playing a PS5 game for 4 minutes (based on their estimate) to 10 minutes (their upper bound)

calulationsource https://www.ecoenergygeek.com/ps5-power-consumption/

Typical PS5 usage: 200 W

TV: 27 W - 134 W → call it 60 W

URI's estimate: 18 Wh / 260 W → 4 minutes

URI's upper bound: 48 Wh / 260 W →10 minutes

[–] MangoCats@feddit.it 0 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

I was just thinking, in more affordable electric regions of the US that's about $5 worth of electricity, per thousand requests. You'd tip a concierge $5 for most answers you get from Chat GPT (if they could provide them...) and the concierge is likely going to use that $5 to buy a gallon and a half of gasoline, which generates a whole lot more CO2 than the nuclear / hydro / solar mixed electrical generation, in reasonably priced electric regions of the US...

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