Vast swaths of the United States are at risk of running short of power as electricity-hungry data centers and clean-technology factories proliferate around the country, leaving utilities and regulators grasping for credible plans to expand the nation’s creaking power grid.
In Georgia, demand for industrial power is surging to record highs, with the projection of electricity use for the next decade now 17 times what it was only recently. Arizona Public Service, the largest utility in that state, is also struggling to keep up, projecting it will be out of transmission capacity before the end of the decade absent major upgrades.
Northern Virginia needs the equivalent of several large nuclear power plants to serve all the new data centers planned and under construction. Texas, where electricity shortages are already routine on hot summer days, faces the same dilemma.
The soaring demand is touching off a scramble to try to squeeze more juice out of an aging power grid while pushing commercial customers to go to extraordinary lengths to lock down energy sources, such as building their own power plants.
“When you look at the numbers, it is staggering,” said Jason Shaw, chairman of the Georgia Public Service Commission, which regulates electricity. “It makes you scratch your head and wonder how we ended up in this situation. How were the projections that far off? This has created a challenge like we have never seen before.”
A major factor behind the skyrocketing demand is the rapid innovation in artificial intelligence,…
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Should companies that contribute heavily to the energy demand, like tech giants, bear more responsibility for solving the power shortage?
@9KNM77CProgressive3mos3MO
Energy companies should focus on finding better and more effective ways to supply power, without the constant fair of state wide power failure.
@ISIDEWITH3mos3MO
@ISIDEWITH3mos3MO
Would you support the construction of large power plants in your community if it meant ensuring a stable power supply?
@SpiritedPoliticLibertarian3mos3MO
What did you think was going to happen? Electrify everything while rapidly discarding existing generation and “transitioning” by 2025. We had Europe as the cautionary tale but ignored it.
@TheRightRobRepublican3mos3MO
If we had ignored the hippy panic ignorance about nuclear power in the 60s-70s imagine the grid we'd have now, with a better environment to boot fools
Amid explosive demand, America is running out of power
@SpiritedPoliticLibertarian3mos3MO
If you're not familiar with the Olduvai Gorge theory, it's time to read up. Exponentially increasing consumption of energy (and everything else) meets exponentially increasing barriers to energy production: falling net energy of oil, rivers drying up, etc
@BoredJudicialSocialist3mos3MO
…yet the Green New Deal is pushing for all sorts of things that make us reliant on electricity without using fossil fuels. This is an intentional effort to control. But sure, vote Democrat.
@YearningCardinalGreen3mos3MO
We are not "running out" of electricity. We are forcing reliable power generation offline and incentivizing unreliable generation, via taxes subsidies and regulations.
This is energy policy failure.
@DelegateGiraffeRepublican3mos3MO
But we’ve spent over $1T on renewable subsidies while simultaneously reducing coal and specifically NattyGas base load.
Throw nuclear around too.
Radical Green Energy policies are crushing America’s low cost, abundant energy that had always given us global advantage
