Power Availability Limiting Data Center Growth

Everyone agrees that our aging power grid needs upgrades, but nobody is offering to pay for them. Now that legacy power infrastructure is being stressed even further with the growing demands of our digital society.   

In an environment where data center energy demand is skyrocketing due to Artificial Intelligence (AI) power needs, the race for power is on for companies whose energy requirements dwarf those ever desired before.   

The Wall Street Journal article ‘Three New York Cities’ Worth of Power: AI is Stressing the Grid examines this combustible blend of energy demand, aging infrastructure, and recently formed AI-centric companies (and crypto miners) trying to stake aggressive claims on a limited supply of power.  

We’ve written about the limitations placed on power delivery to new data centers in Northern Virginia, where 26% of the state’s power is going to serve them.  The Journal covered that and examined the growing demand, and subsequent limitations in other important data center markets like Silicon Valley, Salt Lake City, Denver, Minneapolis, and Ohio, where an energy industry executive says “we need certainty” before making massive investments in new transmission facilities.  Utilities are starting to talk about ten-year commitments from data centers before investing in the infrastructure to deliver that amount of power. 

That’s two years longer than Google and other major web companies have offered to commit to.  In some areas data center users are being asked to pay a premium for power.  Google has balked at that, highlighting the $6.7 billion in investments they’ve made in data centers in Central Ohio. 

The article overall is a fair overview of the need for more power and the jockeying among various stakeholders to make it happen.  It’s worth a read.